Category Archives: Poems 2013

They hunt together,
leapfrog one another
in a low, slow glide
to stir a squirrel
out of the grass
early every morning.
Perched on fenceposts
they follow me
with their eyes.

If a man had time,
feed a little in the lean
and gain a bird’s brain
he could become one,
like falconers of old—
even send them
like high-tech drones
to scout ahead,
gather cattle.

For tomorrow’s heifers, steers
and bulls: I count bales in the dark,
add them to the flatbed dropped
from the top of the stack—
a vertical, class two-dump
hook over hook ascent, each bite
deep beneath colored hay string,
toeholds loose, inching-up
like a spider to belly over
under rafters coated
with old dust and pigeon shit
in space too tight to stand—
to breathe so far from the ground.

My diamond plate target is dished
between the rectangular tubing
spaced to create shallow lakes
when and if it rains, cross members
too far apart to catch very many
and keep its shape. I need eighteen
to haul and feed, yet envision
two broken and five bales on the ground
before I fall asleep—two trips at least
up and down the barn’s new stack—
inhaling its fresh alfalfa face.

It could have been Saturday
when the pump quit,
cattle standing quizzically,

leaves in the garden limp
or a hundred and ten
in the shade with no breeze

to allow your thoughts to ride,
escape to a snowmelt stream
to sit beside instead.

Running water is a luxury
in the middle of all this dry,
a blond and brittle sea of grass

on clay and granite baked
beneath, radiating heat—
each canyon an oven

even the natives left
in the summertime.
So much for progress,

but when we were younger
we all knew how
to prime a pump.

                                        for JEG

Too much of a good thing
has a hatch of gophers
behaving like humans
tunneling earth and orchard roots
with interconnecting subway lines
that conveniently stop at pear,
pomegranate and peach trees
with special dead-end spurs
to tomatoes, peppers and squash.

The city council voted yesterday,
to expand the underground
to meet the transportation needs
of triple population growth
now that the hippest coyotes
prefer feral pork and veal
and slink beyond the range
of a .223.

One dissenting member warned
of a complete collapse
with so much tunneling
and no solid support
for the vegetables and trees
we need to survive.

On high alert, reports
of gopher bombs downtown,
steel traps in new construction zones,
and rumors of farmers and gardeners
resorting to raisins and grain soaked
in poison, we have rallied the troops
and made our political alliances
with the woodpeckers and ground squirrels
to drive the humans out—
or at the very least,
find a balanced peace
and milk them
like California’s happy cows.

courtesy: http://www.pp3moo.com

The spring loosens its ratchet grip
to let a cog slide in the gloaming
of this adventure, as I look back

to softer faces and see the bright
and vulnerable lights flicker still—
despite fifty years of turbulence.

One triggers another around the fire,
half-lit silhouettes showing erosion,
an age that dares that same naiveté

endured among classmates—sweet
indulgence for old preppies, we harken
to the start of our circumambulation.

Ranch hand, irrigator, feeder of hay
wrestling stacks with Egyptian
engineering, I hear no call to arms,

no impossible gather without me—
all the young bucks risking and riding
good horses have that corner covered.

Following the old hands, I know cows,
like people, would rather be led
than driven with whoops and hollers.

A man can wish for shape and sound
that resonates with those he loves
when he’s away—that far distance

our hearts have yet to learn to leap
and be two places at once—to cross
the ink black sky, dot to dot, stars

as stepping stones to both sides,
our envelope in space between here
and there, the stream we swim

with the ease of trout, with grace
and poised efficiency, as matter
not yet facts we comprehend.

But a man must wish it first, follow
the splintered light beams, become
the dust long enough to find a way.

Something passes between eye and ear,
a glimpse, then gone, I can’t identify—a dark
blur or glint of the ethereal, or pinhole peak
into another dimension we have yet to name.

The hunter’s eye catching movement,
the cowboy chasing shapes beyond confined,
I am reminded of Tom Homer’s quote
passed down to me: ‘He looks—
but just don’t see.’ And sometimes

a glimpse is all we need to trigger, to inspire,
to stir the brain and then the flesh, or visa versa—
sometimes it is the yet unnamed
that begets a renaissance of thought. Here,
we leave the gate open just in case.