Category Archives: Poems 2016

SPRING 2016

Posted on March 23, 2016 by | 4 comments

 

20160321-A40A0235

 

A plodding drawn through hot
and dry, through the seasons
to graze this moment,

this cacophony of light—
of life exploding
beneath our feet.

 

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged , ,

IN BLOOM

Posted on March 22, 2016 by | 5 comments

 

20160321-A40A0206-2

 

More than gold and jewels,
hillsides dressed with hair
reaching for the sky.

More than the wealth of green
slopes, tall feed cured dry
and banked. We are rich

with rain, clear into September—
blinded by this moment spilt
upon the ground in bloom.

 

20160321-A40A0206

 

5 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged , ,

BABY BLUE EYES Nemophila menziesii

Posted on March 17, 2016 by | 5 comments

 

20160314-IMG_1811

 

My mother’s favorite, delicate and bold
among the grasses. Hard to come by
in these times, there is a place

among tall oaks where they thrive
that my father must have known,
that I visit every spring to see

they have survived, like innocence
untouched by humankind. She would ask
if I’d seen them, found them yet.

                                        ~

Baby Blue Eyes Nemophila menziesii
½-1½” diameter
4-12” height
March 14, 2016

 

5 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged , ,

IDES OF MARCH, 2016

Posted on March 15, 2016 by | 7 comments

 

20160314-IMG_1757

 

                           that which there is no greater
                                     – “Flying Cowboys”

A yellow pincushion dances outside
my macro lens, unsteady gusts
I can’t follow closely, can’t keep up

on my knees. But I know what I want
and hope for something better
than what I see, let the aperture

find bokeh and focus for a fraction
of a second saved for another time
when I need to escape the news—

lose myself, and be this flower
wild and hearty in sandy ground
that grows poor feed for cattle.

Low downcanyon, all shades
of gray after-rain clouds, convoys
of cumulus trailing the storm from west

to east wanting to be thunderheads
as far as I can see of infinity
from the pasture, this close up.

                                                for Jessica

                                   ~

Yellow Pincushion Chaenactis glabriuscula
1-2″ diameter
1-3′ height
March 14, 2016

 

7 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged , , ,

MY FATHER FARMING

Posted on March 13, 2016 by | 12 comments

 

20160306-IMG_5787

 

We had water enough for play in furrows
with scraps of wood, leaves for sails,
regattas on rivers pumped from underground.

All the magic that children take for granted
swirled to the hum of electricity, twenty-horse
pumps like Buddhas squat in orchard rows

my father farmed for wagonloads of fruit
ripe for the rail, packed by women’s hands
for the road on diesel trucks to distant places.

His silhouette crosses deep within vineyard rows,
early morning, late afternoon, hoe in hand—
his pirate’s cutlass, swashbuckling open-topped

overshoes—checking water, irrigating grapes
at seventy, or so I think at sixty-eight, knowing
now what drew him to the earth he farmed.

 

12 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016

Tagged , , , , ,

RAIN SONGS

Posted on March 12, 2016 by | 7 comments

 

20160308-IMG_5281

 

                                                                                                         and holy
                              days asleep in the calendar wake up and chime.
                                             – William Stafford (“How You Know”)

Tree frogs awake in the dark,
in the rain, a steady wave of chorusing
croaks upon croak—thousands

clear the air in their throats
again and again, prolong moments
no one else seems to want.

I pause in my tracks listening
deep into the wet blackness to a holy
tradition begun before man.

 

0.88″

 

7 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged , , , ,

WAY OUT WEST, 2016

Posted on March 11, 2016 by | 9 comments

 

20160308-IMG_5247

 

Robbin and I know where we belong, that we have grown old while the world has changed around us. We think of our parents and grandparents, understand their frustrations with progress.

The Academy of Western Artists “seeks to preserve the traditional values associated with the cowboy image despite consolidation in the cattle industry and changes in contemporary society. The group hosts an annual awards show.”

Yesterday, with two of our cattle neighbors, we were headed to Forth Worth to meet my son who had flown in from San Francisco, where I was to receive the Buck Ramsey Cowboy Poet of the Year award and have some fun. This morning we’re on Dry Creek, he’s in Fort Worth.

                                        ~

We know the feeling of corrals
in airports, and prepare ourselves
to be bunched-up, to wait in lines
at every gate—to follow rules

for humans. We should have known
red fire trucks as an omen,
but we loaded-up, anyway,
found our seats and waited.

I was a mountain man in another life
dodging Indians and ole Ephraim,
knew them all and their stories
and started reading. About the time

Hugh Glass met the grizzly’s cubs,
the captain came on the intercom
to say it’ll be a short, or long, wait
to leave for Dallas, to find the trouble

with the engine gauge, maybe just
a loose wire. I am a slow reader,
but by the time they started patching
Hugh Glass’s bloody body up,

we deplaned to rebook our flight—
190 head, three hours in the lead-up
to be processed. No way to get
to Dallas and keep the four of us

together, no other plane to haul
the human cargo—no way to share
awards and ceremony. (They kill
the man, anyway, Jeffers said.)

Way Out West beyond the claustrophobe,
we should be proud of plans
that we expect—that have to get—
the work done, where we depend

on few, but in the corrals, numb
humans herding humans used to
to corporate calculations failing—
we treat ourselves and cattle better.

                                          for Temple Grandin

 

9 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

TREES

Posted on March 8, 2016 by | Leave a comment

 

20160306-IMG_1705-2

 

Horizons close-in
with a slow rain,
infinity becomes

a short reach
over the ridge
into the gray.

We begin to think
like old oaks
on north slopes

awakening
to leaf and fruit
with moisture.

We’ve seen the creek
swell and disappear
for centuries,

the road flow
with carts, wagons,
pickups and goosenecks,

stream with Christians
and bright busloads bound
for glory and awe

in the distance. Unseen,
we are rooted just
where we want to be.

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016

Tagged , ,

BLACK RAIN

Posted on March 7, 2016 by | Leave a comment

 

20160301-IMG_5680

 

No moon, no stars,
she sneaks up canyon
in the dark an hour late

gently whispering
from the black
as if she never left.

A sprinkle kisses the roof
I cannot see, but hear
find its way to earth.

After midnight, my mother
would turn the porch light off,
so no one knew I wasn’t home

when we had neighbors, trails
between cabins in the mountains
I knew by braille

and by the sound
of my young feet, light
upon the night trails.

In the end, no one cares
exactly when it rained—
only that it came.

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged , , ,

AT ONCE

Posted on March 6, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

20160306-IMG_1692

 

Canyon gray,
light warm rain,
glass of wine at dusk,

and we enjoy the sound
of small drops
on a metal roof,

tinkling ricochets
in stereo downspouts
that insulate

our momentary sighs,
escaped breath rising
on words overheard

only by the gods
and fickle goddesses
somewhere overhead.

Not the storm predicted,
not the flood
to erase the drought

that won’t release its grip
for years, if ever,
talons sunk in our flesh—

this crease of earth and rock
that’s heard it all before
from generations of oaks

and sycamores, cattle
people and natives,
all sighing at once.

 

2 Comments

Posted in Deck Poems, Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged , ,