Category Archives: Poems 2024

YELLOWSTONE MYTH


The TV cowboys have the best
scripts, estates and corporate jets
to glorify an endangered West
planted with ranchettes

like Jimson Weed
to play make believe
with 100 X beaver lids
and Lucchese boots

no cowman could afford
for looks to match the myth.


https://inthesetimes.com/article/yellowstone-tv-show-finale-gentrification-development-west

 

Comment:

I live within minutes of the Dutton Ranch. It was/is a cartoon of itself long before Hollywood “found” it . As it was “built” on the same mythology before “Yellowstone”  it is NO surprise Hollywood found it perfect for the perpetuation of the myths.   That it is in the Bitteroot Valley, portrayed as Paradise Valley actually on the Yellowstone River , not the Bitterroot River is the least egregious offense of artistic license.

Yes, the perfect set and backdrop to advance the mythology and to pump in enough cash for a few years to “jazz up” a very poor local economy, enriching a few while leaving them detritus of unaffordable housing and other long term burdens that go with ALL boom and bust cycles.

That the “series” collided with  a pandemic driven, house bound, binging viewership was an unfortunate coincidence.  That, along with the ridiculous home prices in some places fueled a mass migration to seemingly cheap relocation opportunities.  The migrants arrived with mountains of cash and the beatific notions of their new “home” grounded in the mythologies absorbed from a screen that they continue to be glued to as the beauty of the real Montana is paying the exorbitant price for simply being beautiful; as if there are NO other considerations.

“They” know not of what they’ve wrought.

-jegrant47

SUNDAY



Light rain like fog
gray in the canyon
closes the world away—

privacy to contemplate
the prolonged moment
that asks no questions

of the no one
you have become
among the mountains.

DRY CRIK CRAWL


Gabe Arroyo would make his rounds
like a jovial Santa at Christmas
with a pickup load of honey and Patron

on the ranches where he kept his hives
for the winter—have an early morning toast
to the New Year:

1 generous shot of Tequilla
2 shots of fresh-squeezed orange juice
in a glass of pomegranate nectar

leftover from Robbin’s jelly. He’d get a jar
and we’d have another round or so
his son-in-law could drive him home.

Gabe’s gone, but we make merry
with his holiday spirit
as if he were still here.

SOLSTICE 2024


Last year’s fine hair,
dry and hollow-stemmed
screens renewed green

sheltered in rocks
that once were one
mind, one set of eyes

to record the wild cycle
of new roots from old
seeds of life — hope

and grace apart
from the rubble
of mankind.


FREE LABOR


First rain
the gophers clean their houses,
stack tailings high

where the Great Blues wait,
stand like statues,
like soldiers across the pasture

for the slightest movement
of well-worked mounds
to stab a meal—then toss it up,

catch open-beaked
and let it slide
down a snaky neck.

My father loved them,
loved the fact
they were working for him.

LITTLE FIRES


Beyond these Chinese solar lights,
wide tracts of black
beneath the storm front

that shrouds the mountains,
our cows and calves
curled upon the green.

Tiny plastic suns and moons
charged with yesterday’s sunshine

defy the night,
defy the news,
defy the wolves

always circling
around our fire.

SYCAMORE GIRLS


They did not care when
Sir Francis Drake claimed them
for the Queen, or when the Spanish

held and lost them
to the Mexicans
and their vaqueros—

they did not care
when Bequettes brought
the first Devins in

to shade beneath their canopies
along the creek—
they did not care.

Long white limbs,
they will dance for anyone
once they lose their leaves.

* * * *

The Sycamore Alluvial Woodland on Dry Creek is the third largest in the world and the largest in the Sierra Nevada Ecoregion.

DECEMBER SYCAMORES


A little rain,
a little green,
a little cold

short of a December freeze

my girls dress
in fiery colors
along the creek trickling

before winter’s strip-tease:
long limbs reaching
from the clothes at their feet.

Some trees have drunk
more than they can hold,
dropping limbs on fences—

but nimble and sylphlike,
they have shown a millennium
a glimpse of sensual grace.



CLICHÉ


Among the old timers
I tried my hand at similes
after a good slow rain

when it was warm and wet enough
to start the grass, they'd say
“thick as hair on a dog’s back.”



SLOW IN–SLOW OUT


1.

Honed peaks and ridges
cut the clear blue sky
and lagging cumulus rising

between storms,
as we await the tail
of a Bomb Cyclone

predicted for our metal roof
with coffee before daylight—
or so we pray.


2.

Slow in—slow out.
Gray clouds clinging
to the hillsides,

four hundredths all day—
58 high,
52 low after

an all-night soaker
with little runoff
to start the grass.