Most days, they can’t see
outside the fort, foothills full
of native ghosts in wild skins
and fine feathers, or the clouds
that boil, fume and sometimes
storm for the fun of it.
Busy with new rules to keep
the stockade safe, they can’t hear
the coyote’s wail in the street—
we live outside its walls
by the same laws
the bird and animal people left us.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Fort Visalia, Frank Latta, Nathaniel Vise, photographs, poetry, rain, red sky, Tulare County History, weather, Yokuts
This side of darkness,
we bring them closer
from beyond the pagan deep.
Back in the barn of my dreams
beneath the debris of lost details
stashed in a stall, I see part
of the anvil where I shaped shoes
for the Tharp’s Peak pair, Bess
and Outlaw—all gone in a haze
of forty years. Rotten halters
and harness leather piled on top,
I thought it was lost or stolen.
But no one loses an anvil.
I trust the dreams hammered there
wear as well as mine.
Lovely, even when
blind determination
grows into a spring trap.
The startled rock pigeons fly in a bunch from the pasture ahead of a drab figure making a game of the hunt, with extra bounds in the short grass for fun. Between them ground squirrels scattering that I can’t see. Bobcat, Coyote in the glasses at 400 yards? A long tail stops to listen to me holler at the house as it leaves, and then again as I repeat myself, winter hair shining like a well-groomed German Shepherd at dusk, looking back over its shoulder at a human outpost in this world. The good dog growls beside me.
Calves big, pups ahead—
even fine specimens
can make a living fun.
Triteleia ixioides – April 10, 2014
Even at a distance smiling
in a cheerful crowd.
I see your face.
Perhaps the most photogenic wildflower, the Golden Brodiaea or Pretty Face begs to be looked upon, straight down, a flat plane of cheerful faces with a fixed focal length looking up without a care in the world. Their bloom is plentiful this spring, showing above our short feed making one last growth spurt, one last gasp before turning and heading out early. At a distance in the green, the clusters appear to be single yellowish flowers, indistinct lush splotches dotting north and east slopes in the low clay and the granite draws. Each cluster much the same, yet uniquely different in bloom and detail, I seem to photograph them every spring.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Drought, Golden Brodiaea, haiku, photographs, poetry, Pretty Face, wildflowers
Once upon a time
everyone of a long-gone people
knew its name.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged haiku, photographs, poetry, weekly-photo-challenge, Yokuts
December 8, 2009
Dependable, Sulphur Peak
faces each day
dressing for the season.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged haiku, photographs, poetry, Sulphur Peak, weekly-photo-challenge
Caged from cattle,
who were her people
pioneering in the foothills?
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Clara B. Stafford, Effie Hilliard, haiku, photographs, poetry, weekly-photo-challenge
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