There is comfort here among dear friends, despite the drought, despite the news, despite a virus that grips the world somewhere below these old corrals where we brand calves—our common religion around Christmastime that we wrap ourselves within— a joyous insulation from despair where we can lend a hand.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged branding calves, community, old friends, Paregien Ranch
Limbs dressed in flames, they await the cloudburst that will disrobe them to stand naked and undulate along the creek until it runs— until late spring. Our chorus line of winter nymphs, centuries rooted in the same place, I stare into their fire and pray for rain. 0.29"
The skid-steer bucket chatters against the clay and decomposing granite baked like concrete, inching deeper into my mind to the great bay horse dressed pink and white with long-stemmed Centuary, scattered wild petals I covered with dirt—each shovelful a memory for over an hour. Another hole and granite headstone, we are surrounded by the old and faithful we have survived— another hole, hearts perforated with each dear soul lost that now arrives to attend this moment to make us whole. Quick and painless after fourteen years of alert devotion, I steal fine ground squirrel tailings smoothed for the ‘good dog Jack’— a winter blanket to sow for flowers.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged death, good dog Jack, graves, survivors
No rare, sixteen-ounce Chile Verde Rib Eye leftovers to box for home, no Iceberg Old School wedge with Blue Cheese crumbles, no red wine bottle at twice the price to finish before leaving town—no spoiling us these Covid days, though we tire of our own cooking, of feeding hay without rain. Bare acres, not a spear of feed half-way up the mountain, these good cows wait with their calves at the gate for dinner.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged alfalfa hay, Covid-19, cows and calves, Drought, feeding, rain
The real old boys who found their weather in the stars, within explosive storms on the sun, years in advance— would be dismayed with how we farm today. My father’s shadow, I followed disc and tractor straining to turn the earth, blackbirds diving like swarming sea gulls behind us, as we broke clods in lace-up boots to test the soil. Trading energy, no one cultivates today to turn green weeds and stinging nitrogen back into the ground—no one marks-out furrows in sandy loam, no one irrigates with a hoe. We spray chemicals (‘herbicides’ sounds nice and friendly) in the naked space between the trunks of vines and trees. We run trillions of miles of black plastic for a sip in drips to save water for more crops we can seldom sell at a profit. Still the perpetual motion of new money: each depreciation offsetting taxes for urban investors on the next farm they sell to one another like summer homes and yachts. Why bother to predict tomorrow’s weather when farms change hands in a swirl of smoke and yellow steel?
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged climate change, farming, farms, urban investors, weather
Hope rises from dark despair, the jagged edge of acrimony hurriedly honed in fear— a pause to lay swords down, for the blood to crust and contemplate alternatives. Are we conscripted warriors for opposing forces, or free to reclaim our sanity, to nurture and heal with the real work the sun awaits? Well, while I’m, here I’ll do the work— And what’s the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow. - Allen Ginsberg (“Memory Gardens”)
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020
Tagged Allen Ginsberg, drunken dumbshow, Healing, politics, The Real Work
Who needed drugs and alcohol when you were a kid shaping thunderheads into dragons and the like— who needed any more than what the sky provided?
One more cigarette for the young dog to piss and poop, to explore the garden, check-out the squirrel holes before I load her up. One more cigarette to let the split oak set before I stack it. One more cigarette and a cup of old coffee to inhale November.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Dark morning chill stirs the flesh to welcome winter waiting for flaming tongues to lick between dry Manzanita branches igniting Blue oak in the woodstove’s glow. I recall storms, the floods and endless downpours, creek too high to cross for thirty days and pray for anything wet enough to start the grass for cows and calves— for my sanity, something akin to normal in these crazy days of politics and pandemic— something to trust as right as rain— something to believe in.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged Calves, cows, pandemic, poetry, politics, rain, winter
Nap-time nurseries
beneath the sycamores,
babysitting cows
relieve one another
to eat and drink.
Those without calves
recline with bellies bulging,
thrust painfully skyward
like over-inflated
black beach balls—
all await the green
soft-stemmed alfalfa—
await new life,
await a rain
to settle dust underfoot
as they graze short-cropped
dry feed into the dirt
awaiting new life—
seed awaiting rain.
The long range forecast
confirms our superstitions,
but like a no-hitter
we dare not mention yet—
until the dark hole
in the barn grows larger,
until the canyon fills
with echoing complaints,
the agonizing song
of cows begging,
calf solos in the distance.
(click)
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