Category Archives: Poems 2018

MATURE

 

 

Perhaps age, or perhaps it’s the 100-degree heat, but my enthusiasm wanes for lots of things, including poetry.

I’m up early enough to write before we leave at daylight when it’s the coolest. Perhaps it’s the drama of the news, its incongruence, its self-righteous and self-serving players vying for the spotlight, for power or money—mostly bad-acting at best, politics has become so terribly transparent these days. Thank God we have work to do.

Yesterday, when we finished processing and doctoring a few eyes of the calves we weaned Tuesday, Terri pulled her iPhone out to document the Greasy calves—something I had planned to do, but didn’t. Thank you, Terri.

Perhaps the work, the satisfaction that comes with the jobs we do is where enthusiasm waits, apart from the distractions of the outside world beyond our ridgelines. Engaged and invested, each day is usually an adventure. So I’ve changed my writing habits to summer afternoons, glad to be inside and out of the heat hoping to find a little more enthusiasm then.

 

 

MATURE

We take sleep when we can,
welcome the dreams that dance
unsteadily from out of dark curtains.

Undisturbed, we are the playwrights,
shaping characters and editing lines
as we move towards an unknown ending

or a mysterious purpose, if any, on this planet
at odds with itself, and with humanity—
yet hoping that the visions we hone

subconsciously will bleed into the daylight
and become like ripe seeds planted
in our brains, waiting, waiting to mature.

 

OMG

 

 

The foundation crumbles—
the red, white and blue
states of dysfunction

grapple blindly
for another victory,
chip away at truth and honor

just to play in the District
of Columbia. Poll-driven
word games, big dollars

for coffers drive the train—
O’ Casey Jones
watch your speed!

 

WELCOME HOME

 

 

Some say joy,
shout happiness
for a moment—

long day
of dust and heat,
exhausted.

 

QUICK ACQUAINTANCE

 

 

Day-old wonders,
what passing pollinator
could resist an invitation

for the momentary splendor
we leave in the dark
to haul confused

fat calves off the hill
in the heat building to
107 degrees—all

the action melted,
long stems limp and wilted
when we return.

 

SAME OLD GROUND

 

 

Same old ground this time of year,
gathering grass-fat calves and steers,
pasture by pasture, to the corrals
to weigh and exchange for cash—

to do it all over again—a collage
of seasoned stories where details blend
within the bronze and brittle stems
between canyons fenced like funnels

down to flatter ground. Cattle gentler,
better bred to routine and for the hook
on these same old hills they graze,
when and if it rains in time for grass.

Habit after half-a-hundred years,
no two the same, we circle back
in the same old tracks, just
to see what we’ll never see again.

 

HERDS OF BIRDS

 

 

Perhaps it is the constant news,
each day a different page,
that I close the book

to watch the Killdeer herd
their brood of errant children—
one always lost. Hatched

on the run, they learn all
the words they will need,
corralled beneath spread wings,

in a few short minutes
until one or two escape
in different directions

to go exploring the forests
of dry and brittle grasses.
It takes two to keep four together:

she to hold the bunch
while he makes circles
leading the last stray home.

 

FOUR SPECKLED EGGS

 

 

Never enough roofs to shed the sun in the San Joaquin,
I’m leveling a pad for a barn with the skid steer
that’s become a hydraulic extension of my hands

between two huge Valley Oaks, four-foot across—
a roost for two Bald Eagles, long-dead witnesses
to father and son not learning to work cattle together.

In the ash pile of fallen limbs, a Killdeer sets and defends
her nest as I surround her with windrows of clay clods
to crumble and fill once the chicks are hatched.

Feathers fanned to fight for hours, her eyes bleed red
as her mate drags a wing nearby. Perhaps respect
lets four speckled eggs stop progress along the creek.

 

GARDEN CAVEAT

 

 

It’s not the cool coast of California
with cypress leaning leeward, but
the tomatoes and squash love

this year’s pleasant inland temperatures,
unaware of summer in the San Joaquin.
We, on the other hand, cringe

ahead of time, remembering so vividly
that it spoils our vacation. But nowadays,
we never know what’s coming, which

unwritten script awaits in ambush.
Escaping to the garden, hopefully I
bloom with our optimistic vegetables,

imagining tasty, blue ribbon fruit—
careful not to be so careless
as to step on a rattlesnake.

 

LOST FRIEND GONE

 

 

The canyon quiet by the fourth dawn, heads buried
beneath the waves of blond dry grasses, behind spears
of wild oats arching empty husks, first-time mothers

grazing like we expect our perfect world to be.
No plaintive calls, no searching draws, no panicked
pleading to canyon walls for their weaned calves

they have almost forgotten. We are relieved
of guilt, unburdened from their guttural mourning,
the harsh cacophony of maternity, of eighty

broken bonds rasping, wild wailing around us.
Aging skin grows thin imagining the magic
of companionship delivered from the womb,

of nursing, of mothering the first-born and losing it.
Emptiness and sorrow for a lost friend gone,
these cows giving voice to my unusual confusion.

 

NO RETREAT

 

 

Spring lingers into May, empty
blue clouds in a pink sea at dawn—
an ancient armada claiming sky,

this canyon that yesterday’s Navy jets
left thundering, practicing, maneuvering
for war. Here along the shrinking creek

Egrets and Killdeer wade, we measure
global tension, hear its roar, primitive
and deafening with no retreat.