Category Archives: Poems 2013

Can we call it just
another day, another passing
of the sun overhead
to get things done, one
to measure, fill the seasons,
months and years
facing first light
from the same door
through which we retire
to our sweet gloaming?

Looking back and forth,
Janus has nodded off
with each new plan
to work around the weather
when it doesn’t rain,
cattle in the hills—
like counting blades of grass,
we can bale them now,
box them to gather dust.

Young men play so hard
it almost hurts to watch—
remembering: time shot
one moment to the next
like endless ammo
through an assault rifle.
Young men figure
they’ll retire
just to play harder.

That old saw
about taking better care
if we’d known
we’d live this long
cuts true and deeper
than when I first heard it
from the old men betting
I’d never see thirty—
but luckily I played
on credit.

Wikipedia

                              Clouds and rain on the tips
                              of mountains prodding the sky,
                              music pouring from some well,
                              I stepped into the light.
                                        – Quinton Duvall (“XII. Testament”)

Too much moon to sleep,
coyotes make contact.
Break dark silence. Call
from every draw that falls
into the shallow creek.

They need no code
to translate, to decipher—
no allegorical symbolism
to paint in pastels,
no words at all, singing

to one another like poets
tend to do trying to reach
a high note, one last pitch
at heaven with no one else
to listen but quiet darkness.

It’s what they do at night
in the spring, stirred
from dreams to yip and howl.
But to truly call it music
is only a matter of taste.

                                        for Paul and Quinton

                         If you love mushrooms
                         you’re already a billionaire.
                              – Nanao Sakaki (“No Trespassing”)

O’ time, like storm or stagnant air,
in my face or hanging-in there:
I was young once and ignorant,

or just brave to fill a sack
with freckled-faced mushrooms—
always more than I could eat

until my belly ached
with their wild richness sliced,
butter and garlic steaming

in a slow frying pan. After
hunting and picking ducks
with my grandfather, we filled

buckets in the Los Baños fog,
sharing wealth that made
my folks sick to think

of my making a mistake.
I was young once and ignorant,
but now just plain lucky!

Near the equinox, first foothill row
of South slopes turned
light-brown in a haze,

tan against the North green
and the yellowing West
facing Valley towns and orchards

about their business. A pale moon,
just shy of full, floats on a light-blue
page beyond ridges become one line

darkening. In this evening
of light, we speak poetry
with cigarettes and red wine.

‘Ripe for a rain,’ you grin pleased
to improve my alliteration,
my half-hearted hope for relief

as dry gloaming fades
to hide our short grass.
No other human ear for a mile

and only barren heifers at the fence,
dogs listening in their sleep,
I proclaim loudly, feeling pagan,

searching for any sign that might
bring a slight change—
‘A moon rising for a rain.’

A house, a short-way up the road
on the canyon’s curve, looks abandoned
but it is warm and comfortable inside

where I head afoot, noticing sign.
Around the bend, some kind of vehicle
is crunched into a rock pile,

upside down, broken glass—I look
for life but there is no one, dead or alive.
I look inside the house for a dent

in the couch, a butt in the ashtray,
then relax to contemplate
what I don’t understand.

I hear voices out back and see three
young men reclined around a rocked-in
fire for cooking. The yard is immaculate

without debris of weeds and leaves
as they look up to greet me, offering
the best they have, when I wake up.

Flashing red lights scream upcanyon,
set dogs and coyotes howling,
startle cattle and the horses to look

afraid of what we don’t know. Road
too narrow for the eyes of tourists
to leave, too many curves for speeding

motorcycles, too many steep places
to meet a tour bus or a neighbor
hauling cattle, or someone with

too much to drink—we never know.
But back slow and easy, the ambulance
was either not needed, or just too late.

                                                            for Linda Hussa

1.

Back when energy was cheap,
we lit smudgepots—ten cents/gallon
to keep from freezing an orange crop.

Manpower, six-bits/hour—fifty-five
hour-weeks bent to wooden handles
shoveling, hoeing weeks, or harnessing

a Cornbinder’s horsepower
when damn-near any Mom and Pop
could make a dollar from the earth

farming—a young man horseback
could ride all-day for almost free
and old cowboys worked for nothing.

 
2.

We had lots of energy in the old days,
lots of hands we can’t afford
to hire anymore, water going deeper

and pump bills higher, we suck
the planet dry for expensive things
we never used to need

when energy was cheap.
With the sun on my face
and wind at my back,

I thought I would last forever
like the Eveready Bunny—
back when energy was cheap.

                        Antistrophe of desolation to the strophe multitude.
                                    – Robinson Jeffers (“Still the Mind Smiles”)

Either by design or to assuage the monotony of heaven,
the gods decide the course of storms to start the play,
set a season’s stage in motion with the belly-crawl
of bugs and snakes, those players closest to the earth.

Most of the birds wait in the wings—a finch flits
in the roof beams, a lone Killdeer surveys the sand
along a receding creek, movement without dialogue
or song, a slow and solitary dance unfolds

to envelop us, the audience, and we are helpless.
On the other side of the mountain, the river will not
run long enough to feed the ridiculous, the excesses
of the madding throng. Two opposing worlds exist

and the gods sit balanced on the ridges between
extremes. But it is the nature of cows to graze
the flats rather than the steep. Only a few
will forsake the bunch until the grass grows short.