Category Archives: Poems 2013

                               …this is what agony wanted,
                               these wildly colored birds to inhabit
                               my mind far from pain.
                               Now they live inside me.
                                                – Jim Harrison (“Oriole”)

Over sixty years here
and I don’t know the names
of my closest neighbors,

and taken their blurring
presence for granted, like
tourists speeding up the road.

I see now why old Harrison
is fond of birds, independence
so often missed as souls

prepare to fly. Yesterday
driving back from my brush
with the outside world,

scattering its frustrations
like litter along the barbwire,
he cut through the cold air

for a quarter mile
beside and a little below me
to pace the pickup. For

those playful moments,
our gray and graceful flight
owned both earth and sky—

a sense the untamed envy
in this, or any other life. How
could I not know his name?

Hundred-degree August, new filaree
now grows flat with weeks of cold, red
and purple patches with morning frost—
old cows and second mothers thin,
resigned to raising babies—not yet
spring. Sixty days last winter dry,

they wonder why they bred back.
It wasn’t love the bulls fought over,
re-stretching fences into kindling
and barb wire traps, no long term
planning or romance—nothing lasting
but for the calf, grazing what others can’t.

It is not perfect in the natural world
evolving with humans looking for a living,
that accomplishment that defines our progress
and growth—a wealth that nurtures itself
while we sleep and dream of other things
much less basic to our survival.

After awhile, these old hills echo
with the sayings that have endured,
poetry proven right that draws the line
between what is and what we wish
to see. Foothill forecast: cold and
beautiful with snow down low tonight.

You may someday find me here
among the cattle, in the branding pen,
around a fire or find my fence repairs

and wonder why I took so long
to wrap my splices—stack them
either side of rusty wire like dallies

on a cotton-wrapped horn—drops
of blood and sweat at each tangle
without gloves, young fingers strong.

Built after the war, damn-near
every fence was old when I got here,
got to follow hurried hopes of holding

for the moment, got to cussing
those before me. I learned their work.
How I hated those first ten years

of fixing fence. But someone will say
I must have liked it towards the end—
usually choosing to work alone.

We acknowledge gods we know
in passing, leant their blessing,
helped keep messy jobs clean.

I draw the moving X from ears
to eyes to intersect just above
the imperfect star and look away

to hillsides greening, ridgelines
high into the blue. Blinders on,
I focus and squeeze as the knees

buckle and I can breathe, red
gushes upon alfalfa upon fresh
green—life old and new remain.

No wonder it was a grand reunion
of all my dead friends just before
I awoke, hugs and laughter,

random glasses tipped to eternity.
No wonder I believe in gods
that can take me where I want to be.

                                                  You can’t starve a livin’
                                                  out of a bunch of cows.
                                                            – E. J. Britten

We watch the weather in the winter,
gather where we can between rains
branding calves before they grow
to be work, while it’s easiest on them

between clips of the aftermath
of homegrown terrorists, or Falstaff
as his crew of postured orators
waving grandly at God as if to claim

His omniscient endorsement.
There is much to fear, nowadays:
the flu has taken over California—
gun permits at an all-time high.

They have extended parts
of the Farm Bill, re-subsidized
the dairy guys, but let the droughts
slide with not enough votes to matter.

We watch the weather on winter nights
and wonder why no one seems
to understand that starving a farmer
won’t help keep your plate full.

Another new year in the middle
of a week, of a lifetime yawning
awake under cold empty clouds

above the Live Oak crackling
in the branding barrel. Uphill,
lying on a granite rock, a coyote

watches horses being bridled,
cinches snugged, doesn’t know
what day it is, doesn’t hear

the rifle shot. Last year’s seed
is short, easily turned under hooves
sorting cows from calves, perfect

for two young men on sorrel horses
in a small pen, perfect for heel loops
and black calves stretched and rolled

for the iron, the dance, the works—
perfect, you remark, for the garden,
stirred and fluffed with years of cattle.

We talk of guns I’ve never shot,
muzzles in a corner, barrels prolonged
in twenty-year kisses, begun when

I was a young man pressing fences,
when Bill Clinton was our President.
Out here, no one cares what day it is—

religion and politics take a back seat
to the tangible we need to exist—
like horses and cattle, coyotes and hawks.

Twenty years ago I would have fought
for a chance at this life, even died
to protect it. Now, we dare not stop—

squeezing each moment instead of triggers,
one heavy step ahead of the other
packing things we don’t need, anymore.