In the afternoon, the hills are yellow now,
turquoise oaks, the buckeyes’ tan leather brown
claim equal space high up, but daybreak clear
but for a rosy raft of smoke on a monsoonal trail
alone, last of fires let run to consume the drought
and bug kill: scarecrow cedars, naked pines
pitched for flame. My eyes climb to the near
ridgeline for clarity—for a sign of what’s to come
within the hazy world affairs well beyond us.
Robert’s shadow, I followed my father
from vineyard to orchard behind tractor
and disk, stomped clods in the fresh-tilled
ground, inhaled the damp earth turned,
blackbirds like sea gulls diving behind us.
I dreamed of driving the once-red Cornbinder,
leaky muffler loud with each explosion,
each spark to gas vapor, its lean cowling
layered white with years of Parathion
in the 50s, before making perfect furrows.
That well-kept look of cultivation turning
the nitrogen of weeds and nettles under
with tankage and manure for California gold
when farmers worked the earth and added
more to the soil than chemicals and drip
irrigation. To this day I make the sound
of tractors in my throat, remember
the Case 300 disking steep orchard rows—
and just before it stalled out, front wheels
lifting off the ground—the dependable lurch
to the left to make another round.
have come to dine on quail
while Cooper’s Hawks
work elsewhere. Low
sleek glide behind
a whir of wings
and feathers aflutter.
@ 70, you try
to save steps, weigh
pick ups and deliveries
against carrying capacity
and memory hoping
not to forget
the grand plan
along the way—only
to find repetition
a good mental and physical
exercise in reality,
like it or not.
Shuffling his Florsheim wingtips
towards the hospital doors,
my father quipped, “A man has to
get used to being
not first in line.”
Change has not run off
and left us without humor,
without our backwards perspective
and subsequent syntax,
but thinking too far ahead
to save time, to insure
efficiency, we may miss
the moments we have
chosen to live for.
Everywhere we look
nearby news, activity
we can’t escape
unless we fly
above it all.
It takes a herd of eyes,
a flock of senses
to survive the wild
and domestic
intrusions
of this world.
No time to lollygag
when everyone becomes
someone’s breakfast.
Pay attention.
No manila folders, no alphabetical tabs
among the files of fuzzy memories, no
random access search of the mind, yet
the forgotten lie in wait like dry tinder
for a spark to fire and bring to light
lost episodes excised in the editing.
We write the shameful off like bad
investments, or like tuition spent
to improve our reflection. How soon
we forget—yet the perfect details
that with cold hard steel chip
gray flint red just like the first time.
Tell me everything is normal,
that I have slowed as time
has accelerated change—
that there are people, out there,
trying to steal you away
with worry and fear,
trying to bait you
with their protection
like a coyote in a cage.
Tell me everything is normal,
that anything you say
can become criminal,
that all the double-entendres,
similes and metaphors,
all the poetic devices
may be held against you
someday. It was serious
in the fourth grade:
a love note to Denise
promising marriage
and devotion falling
into my parents’ hands—
a mortifying lecture
to be careful what I write.
Mt. Tamalpais – L.E. Rea (1868-1927)
For a moment in the movie I was moved—
removed from the chaotic struggle for power,
the clumsy bad actors, the sick intrigue.
For a moment, the song sang for me,
free from the fetters of this flesh to float
on eagles’ wings above the discord of humanity.
For a moment, the photograph forgave me,
took me in and gave me eyes to see
the simple splendor of reality.
For a moment, I was the poem: it wrote me
beneath sharp peaks of granite scree
sunk deep into a blue, blue sky reflected
on Sierra snowmelt, white clouds passing.
What for the art have we to offer for release
but moments marked where we found peace.
Where the creek stops in moss-laden pools
miles above the Kaweah in August, wild hens
collect with half-grown poults scratching for seeds
and bugs—aware, but not caring. I whistle
for a gobble as they drift off into the brush
as I have, into the canyons of lichened rock,
the Live Oak and Chamise. I am native
here, apart from where I came to forget
the blunderbuss of duplicity.
I came to be refreshed by the unafraid,
by the innocent and self-reliant—
I came to bring some home with me.
Mind gone blank: Zen empty
across the creek gone dry,
shadows stretching over long blond feed,
first-calf heifers coming out from under
shade to water for an evening’s graze.
It’s all the mind I need.
The news rains off my shoulders.
Even the eclipse didn’t faze me,
but for the fuzziness in my gut.
For a moment, it worried me—
so disconnected to the periphery
I had no need for poetry—
no need for anything but to breathe,
to inhale and cleanse the flesh
as it melts into the gloaming.
drycrikjournal 