Category Archives: Poems 2013

No trace, no drizzling mist—
she will really have to rain
into the night into the dawn

into the draws into the creek
into a rising frothy broth for weeks
to address our growing list of jobs

unfurled, saved for a rainy day.
We’ve emptied the barn: ‘making
hay while the sun shines’ available

to hungry cattle far too long
to remember all the work postponed
to keep them alive—the basic

little jobs that maintain the machinery
runs smoothly, heart and mind
intact. But first, the oil and grease

to lubricate the old joints: time
to rejoice and celebrate, to marvel
with the miracle of a rainy day.

With no puddles or streams
to wade, the Great Blue Herons
frozen in pastures wait

for movement of earth like
sentries over gopher mounds
all summer long. A Harris’s Hawk

claims a rock among a million
cow chips daring a squirrel
to make a living outside

his burrow. Everyone grounded,
we crave ascension—to leave
in a haze or rise with the dust.

Like poetry over whiskey, neighbors
in from feeding, first day of two-fourteen,
glasses raised to the native cows and daughters

we prize in hard times. Another language
where words roll near the edge of vulgarity
and descriptive gerundives ricochet around

the kitchen like ice rattling our empty glasses.
But always the allusion of something more
that holds us to this ground, this watershed

we can’t shake, yet celebrate daily
for as long as we can. Crass and basic lines
I try to remember, steal for a poem

in the morning—always another way
of looking—seeing that it is
no small miracle, this earth adapting.

                                                            for Craig and Ronnelle

Some reason we
believe

moves and dangles
beyond dry leaves
clinging

into the new year,
this side of the Kaweahs
baring granite teeth—

some logic yet
to focus clearly,
every soul hungry

hunting something
to fill their bellies.
An urgency

in fragile air before
the haze and dust—
a quickening

to our plodding
like old horses
headed home.

What star has fallen
from dark heavens, what
holds the clouds back?

Some reason we
remain to see.

Golden hours before the haze
rises from the Valley, all shades
of yellow and brown without green

blaze beneath a deep blue,
cloudless sky—old horses hesitate
to notice, find remarkable, shuffling

the same words day after day.
No one listens to the forecast
over coffee anymore. Dusty hills

wait for a plan. You suggest
we brand some calves—best chance
we’ve ever had to bring a rain.

This is not the end, of course—
we promise ourselves another day
when earthen hills turn wild with color,

cattle fat. We search photographs
for details begging to come alive again.
We circle back to bring them with us.

This dusty trail goes on and on,
and yet there are places the earth grins
defiantly in the draws and north slopes

thin with spears of green, curled by frost,
reaching gleefully for the warm Solstice—
unafraid of the future, unafraid of us.

Sing me a dry song, something
somewhere else you learned to chant
under your breath. Mesmerizing,

they stand half-dressed in morning light
in a pool of golden leaves, Solstice
peeking low under the door, showing just

enough bark that I forget the words to this
chorus of sycamores, my dancing winter
nymphs trying-on new outfits—posing,

having fun showing me what I have not seen.
Sing me your dry song, share the mantra
of the plodding before they prove:

a drought can be beautiful and soothing.
But better yet, bring me a hard rain, so
we can get naked and start over again.