Category Archives: Poems 2016

BLACK SKIES

Posted on November 24, 2016 by John | 3 comments

Dark morning without moon or stars
before the first winter storm, the day before
Black Friday rains deals and discounts

for Christmas, for our economy and I am
ever thankful that the bulls are out early
courting cows, meeting kids and family

before dirt roads get too slick to travel—
ever thankful for the drought that felled
two big Live Oaks on the gate and fence

we corded-up and stacked beneath the eave
before the girls drove posts and spliced
the barbed wire on a mat of green

to leave the mess looking like a park—ever
thankful for them, for you and this ground
we’re invested in together, for good horses

willing to get the cow work done—
black skies without moon or stars,
you and I alone before the storm.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged bulls, cows, Dry Creek, firewood, friends, photography, poetry, rain

VIRGINS

Posted on November 23, 2016 by John | 2 comments

Unloaded into a new world
from the soupy end of a semi,
three clean, black and fat young bulls

spend their first night bewildered
away from home with alfalfa
to rest before I brand and turn them

into families of cows and calves
strung in a line on hay waiting
for their awkward inspection.

It takes time to learn the language
of making love, a prolonged foreplay
of mistakes and miscalculations

as I remember shadows in the 60s,
a fractured bravado ready
for reconstruction any time of day.

An old man worries nonetheless—
checks their progress before dark
confirming they’ve been to water.

Still working on their approach
to young mothers, no seed planted yet,
nothing banked into our future.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016

Tagged bulls, cattle, photography, poetry

WEED SEED

Posted on November 21, 2016 by John | Leave a comment

                                                                                                    …my life
                                        a patient willing descent into the grass.
                                             – Wendell Berry (“The Wish To Be Generous”)

Hemmed in silver moonlight, scattered
clouds linger over hills, no wet reflection
of the porch light. She has come and gone

without waking me with thunder, pellets
on the roof, not a leaky drip from the eave,
leaving nothing to remember her passing

by—not even her musty petrichor perfume
in the damp dark air to soothe my senses—
gone without a thought of waking me.

From a distance in the daylight, islands
of purple filaree look like dirt in graying
green, rolling dusty plumes follow cows

into water, yet they don’t seem to worry
into another winter without rain. Too
familiar, I read the signs with each synapse

shortened by the hard and dry. Too long
in the same place, I can see the weather
and the world have changed around me—

changed me as I retreat and try to adapt
like summer weed seed over time:
impervious to thirst and political herbicides.

INGRAINED

Posted on November 19, 2016 by John | 4 comments

I awake with chain saw eyes
measuring fallen trees:

to die of thirst,
dividends of drought

thick torsos with loose bark,
little brush to stack

to clear for grass,
to cover quail from hawks—

stove wood to haul and split
to hold the cold at bay

outside the door
into chimney smoke

and they are beautiful
in death, limbs reaching up

lengths cut clean
with sharp eyes

like people to heaven
begging notice, a chance

for purpose yet
and I am looking,

measuring like a tailor
around burls and forks—

old habits stumbling
with weak knees

in and out of dreams
come wintertime.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016

Tagged Drought, photography, poetry, winter, wood

MANIFEST DESTINY

Posted on November 18, 2016 by John | 1 comment

Lake Kaweah, July 4, 2015

It was swamp between the rivers and creeks
of melted snow, men claiming ground by boat,
a century of floods and drought before the dam

slowed the river down to fit furrows and ditches
to feed the world, the course of water left in crops
we farmed with mules before the teams of tractors

grew so big and smart as not to need a man
to guide them. We made towns look like cities
with cool conditioned air, still digging deeper

for pockets of water where no river flows.
Someday, she will take her ground back
from the idols and graven images of rock star

convenience. Someday we may balance joy
with work instead of wages, find eyes to see
the obvious is less than what we think we need.

1 Comment

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016

Tagged water

THE FUTURE IS FEMALE

Posted on November 17, 2016 by John | 3 comments

                                            Sigh no more, ladies.
                                                                                            Time is male
                                            and in his cups drinks to the fair.
                                                 – Adrienne Rich (“Sanpshots of a Daughter-in-Law”)

The women here wear leaves,
offer shade and dance in place
of plans to clear the unimproved—

or they bear children, populate
with coyote pups that learn
to clean the plates of men

girls fill with grass, raising
cows for heifer calves—
women teaching women.

The hawks are nesting, almost
everything on the wind
is a feminine production—

no passing fad for a buck.
I’ll raise my glass, bet
our future on the women.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016

Tagged Adrienne Rich, cows, female, Mother Nature, photography, poetry, wildlife, women

THE SONG

Posted on November 15, 2016 by John | 2 comments

Rare harmony, the grays and greens
spill off the hills like stringed music
in the gloaming, naked oaks in granite,

cows and calves bent to new grass
step slowly mowing earth and rain
at work in the bright of day and night.

Like sea tides rising, each blade eager
twists towards the moon in cool darkness,
drawn to listen to heaven’s basic chords.

A wild sound is playing now outside
while waiting for a cloud, for the strum
of winter storms to prolong the song.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged Calves, cows, grass, photography, poetry, weather, wildlife

TOGETHER

Posted on November 13, 2016 by John | 2 comments

                                    And note this, dear dead doctor:
                                    When we sleep, our legs twitch,
                                    And not from the hunt
                                    But from trying to run away.
                                                   – Gary Soto (“Dr. Freud, Please”)

A Red Tail pair in Blue Oak tops, buff breasts bared
glow at first light, watch over their dark shoulders
as I feed hay, speak to horses, winter mornings

to wonder about the everyday routines that tie us
to animals, to a place and time by the sun. The deer
would lay down where the barn stands now

over a shrinking stack of bales, a short walk
to metal mangers as I look back through the eyes
of the house to see you moving to the woodstove,

curls of Manzanita smoke disappear into the gray.
We have camped in the trail between canyons of wild
pad and hoof, claimed the space they walk around

and would take back should we be gone for long
without our habits holding what we’ve done together,
together—for this moment we hold our ground.