We filled buckets of mushrooms
my mother’s grumpy father and I
freshly instructed at ten
what toadstools looked like.
I brought my share home for a panful
of wild slathered in garlic and butter
but got the blame
for my father’s upset stomach.
Back when I was invincible,
riskng chance with circumstance,
I filled buckets on my own
as the ground warmed after rain.
And today, freckled-capped colonies
claiming fresh green beckon me,
pink or brown underneath,
to taste one more time.
I count the barks in the dark
before sunrise, dog on the job
as I try to cypher who intrudes
our tranquility—so much like
tragic news in the daylight
hunting humanity and me
after the primal bellowing
of bulls echo the canyon,
or the solo owl in a nearby oak
searches for an answer,
as joyous choruses of coyotes
find one another
before the day’s work
of stalking rodents
or claiming carrion.
Earthbound, they can’t fathom
the news I hear and read,
feel it clutch mind and heart,
the wounded part of me
cut both ways
for being human.
Once they get their legs to travel
and explore apart from mother,
left at the babysitter’s with fresh
calf licked clean asleep, they center
at the water trough waiting for the udder
off grazing to return. Every morning’s
‘buck and run’, opposing blind sprints
before they learn how to stop
only to circle back to where they began.
Always the stealer, head marked with manure,
waiting for the young cow’s calf to suck
before approaching from the rear—
a dance of patience and insistence
in a great green ballroom that becomes them—
it takes a herd to raise a calf.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2026, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged bovine babysitters, Calves, mothers, stealers
Damn-near naked now
after good rains
without a frost
by New Years,
fleeting autumn colors
gone drab brown
before undressing.
Each twig stripped
of new growth leaves,
water pumped
into veins to see
if these fine lines
survive—and we
along for the ride.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2026, poetry, Ranch Journal
A young man’s pastoral dream
of forever meadows sprinkled with cattle
was still possible with work and rain,
with the right people and partner
to hold it, and one another, together
humbly yielding to the dry years,
the brown leaves of families:
old oaks dotting the hillsides
before saying goodbye—
before me now in a light rain upon
the green as I step gladly into it
to check the rain gauge.
drycrikjournal 