Funny how I can’t remember
just how the Lupine looked
like a brand-new town,
the crowded Gilia, white heads
bowed without a photograph
for proof. All the pretty faces
gone, I have a crush on spring—
as my mother, her coffee cup
beside me, would often say
of my impetuousness—I fall hard,
all ill feelings squeezed
from the inside out, swept away.
But etched in my skin, in the walls
of my brain, I can’t forget the dust,
every particle I inhaled of drought.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, flower-friday, gilia, lupine, photography, poetry, wildflowers
I dreamed I went upriver
on young legs until the roar
of snowmelt over boulders
shrank into a meadow
stream lined with pines—
going back in time.
Nothing has changed
the blackened rings,
the chiseled peaks beneath
a blue, blue sky—
and I am small again,
but with older eyes.
Where will our children go
when they get old at night?
What will they follow
to find themselves
content to be
engulfed in awe?
Thousands of friendly faces,
family reunions camped
on grassy slopes and swales
waiting in the wild
since the rains came.
The guests of honor pause
in calm disbelief, dismount
and crawl among them
to take a good long look
at spring.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged Golden Brodiaea, photography, poetry, Pretty Faces, Triteleia ixioides, wildflowers
Posted in Haiku 2016, Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged haiku, photography, poetry, rare and endangered, wildflowers
To circumnavigate
the granite entwined as one
to bathe in sunshine.
~
On reconnaissance to ostensibly assess the native feed in order to decide when we will begin weaning our calves, Robbin and I spent a delightful day in Greasy yesterday. With more grass than cattle, it wasn’t the amount of grass, but its maturity we were judging between several camera stops and a quick snack with a clan of cows and calves. Though some wildflowers have been conspicuously absent this spring, like popcorn flowers, most have flourished while competing with the tall grass.
Posted in Haiku 2016, Photographs, Poems 2016
Tagged Dichelostemma volubile, photography, poetry, Twining Brodiaea, wildflowers
I could have been born a bird
on a gravel island in the creek,
learn to hide in a small world
before I found the gentle grace
to fly, hop rock to rock
as mother drew intruders off
with shoreline flaps of her white
petticoats, feigning injury,
crying seriously in low circles.
I could have been born a bird
without certainty, without worries
about my death or taxes.
We were talking conservation easement
restrictions, all the rules for a cash
injection to hold the ranch together
into the future, terms and acronyms
for multisyllabic concepts applied
to ground grazed for a century
and a half, nice young girl and I,
when the deal broke over cordwood,
dead-standing Blue Oaks for our woodstove—
peckerwood in perpetuity. My good
intentions shot full of holes,
I am relieved with each one I see.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged conservation easement, photography, poetry
After the war,
hats and horses,
black and white heroics
helped us forget
Hitler and Hiroshima,
helped heal and shape
half of humanity hooked
on Hollywood cowboys.
I lived close to the stars,
slept near the fire,
drank from a stream
of tomorrows
that have arrived
twenty thousand times
working towards
this moment in a poem:
glimpses of reckless youth
and luck at the Longbranch
replaced by another tribe
of younger men
wild, woolly and tough.
With each wind-whipped rumor,
I worry more about them
than I did myself.
Slow to leave after
a night rain, the clouds still want
to party at dawn.
Loose upon this earth
we mark our presence
like dogs at dusk,
blaze trees
and build fence
to claim our place
in time, to sleep
at peace
with the outside world
of Pharisees gone wild.
We fill their bowls
with beef.
drycrikjournal 