Four-point buck, horns
dull just out of velvet
five weeks before season opens—
quick hoof thump
of my old heart
upon the hard ground,
I smell venison marinade
over an open flame,
taste the back-strap melt
upon my tongue,
wild cunning juices
surging in my veins.
I become young again
and shoot
through a camera lens.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019, Ranch Journal
Had we fish to stupefy
with turkey mullein seeds
the late rains have left
in turquoise waves
above the knees—
we could be native.
Instead we feed
the squirrels beneath
these fuzzy canopies
where shotgun hunters
will wait for mourning dove
to light and leave.
Croton setigerus: a native of the western United States, and found commonly from southern California north to Washington, particularly in the more arid locations away from the coast.
I don’t ever remember Turkey Mullein, or Dove Weed, so tall and thick and claiming such large tracts of dry summer pasture, or its color quite so blue—worth journaling, I think.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dove Weed, photography, poetry, Turkey Mullein, wildflowers
When we were children,
we played among the wrecks
of old cars and horse-drawn
wagons with wooden spokes
that hemmed the orchards
that sustained us—families
scattered round distant towns
we could visit
with ripe imaginations.
Bigger now, cities spreading
like amoeba ingesting farms
and one another, like wildfires burning
closer as convenient conflagrations
that have erased the landmarks
where we hung our memories.
It could be creeping senility
that I embrace, a watercolor wash
across pastoral landscapes
rather than the spinning pace
of progress—perpetual motion
like the galaxies of space.
They have begun to circumambulate new slopes to graze
around the house
learning to make their circles between troughs and ponds,
forty-five days away
for the first new mothers to lick a calf up to suck
for the next nine months.
A week off the irrigated green, they’ve overcome the shock
of dry hollow stems
to make a home where we can watch and worry,
as is our custom—
we get know them. About a third will make the herd
for ten years.
With so much time together, we operate by instinct,
you and I,
triggered by well-worn habits, the angle of the sun
and the length of shadows
these young girls already know—a second nature
we had to learn.
Out of the black insides of a cow,
the crooked line of dawn’s horizon
reorients my place in the world
as a coyote draws the dogs’ bark—
a constant game without me.
By day, the overflow spills up the road,
herds of top-packed SUVs
following cops on a pot bust,
military-style: well-spaced, single file
like prairie schooners. Old eyes
search the darkness for the familiar
ground that has yet to change.
for Mark Arax
The ground is sinking
to where the water used to be
all across the San Joaquin,
agriculture’s deficit spending
leveraged into fortunes
for California’s kings.
This side of the Sierra divide,
it’s always been ‘boom or bust’,
flood or drought,
nothing normal
in between
to bank on
but drill more wells for nuts:
almonds and pistachios,
another million humans
to farm like cattle,
corral in cubicles
they can’t afford.
With the nature of California,
paradox or conundrum,
a constant battle.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019
Tagged California, Mark Arax, poetry, The Dreamt Land, water, wells
The crows know what time
the maids come to clean—
leave their cart of sheets and towels,
TP and soap, coffee and especially
creamers unattended.
They wait on the roof.
Black fledglings watch the plastic peal,
peck when they can to help,
nothing’s spilt.
It’s part of the price
to stay on the coast
where no one seems to notice.
Daytime buzzards circle gunshots
and the dogs bark at three in the morning
when the pups arrive to consume
my pruning of a bumper crop
of ground squirrels, squads that raid
garden and orchard to harvest fruit
before it’s ripe, leaving nothing to glean.
In sixty days, the heifers will be calving
for the first time, confused and alone
licking a wobbly, wet calf clean
of the scent that draws the coyotes
who watch and know the habits
of all of us in a world
without crimes or rules.
I’ve heard stories I don’t remember
embellished into local myths
no longer true, no longer claimed
as I age, as memory fades
as it should from the far context
of most outdoor youths.
Oh, how we howled like a pack
of coyotes in these canyons—
louder yet in towns avoided now.
But a man learns not to dwell
on guilt, what can’t be helped
to please the righteous—
evolutions of imperfection
honed into an existence
we’ll soon live without.
Hot early—
pack water,
perspire more,
find a breeze
to face
with a distant grin
and measure
the daylight left
until you’re done.
drycrikjournal 