Category Archives: Ranch Journal

Fuller Branding, North Ranch 2016

Posted on January 19, 2016 by John | 5 comments

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Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Fuller branding

Sabbath Branding

Posted on January 18, 2016 by John | 5 comments

Rain has been the recurring forecast with measureable amounts on over half of the last thirty days, pleasant and needed relief from four years of drought. Picking a day to brand is tricky business, usually requiring a day or two before to gather the cows and calves off steep, slick hillsides. Putting a crew of neighbors together to help often conflicts with their own branding schedules. Then the planning of a meal, perishables hanging in limbo to feed friends afterwards, keeps us tuned to the TV and several weather Internet sites for a composite report to insure we won’t be rained out before we go for it. But no one complains. Robbin jokes that when the call goes out, “We’re having a picnic, bring your horse.”

Yesterday’s approaching storm cloaked the canyon in soft ethereal gray, muted morning light where it narrows four miles above us at the Buzzard Roost Fire Control Road, corrals deep within its walls of almost-iridescent green, large ghostlike patches of naked Buckeyes on the north slopes, surrounded by skeletons of leafless Blue Oaks, some dead, some alive.

A perfect day for us to help Steve and Jody Fuller brand, I’m told that everything goes with green and gray.

Weekly Photo Challenge: “Alphabet”

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Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged branding, weekly-photo-challenge

BACK THEN, 1966

Posted on January 15, 2016 by John | 3 comments

November 7, 2015

I escaped the farm
as a backcountry packer
of mules, to the rhythm
of hooves and draw chains—
found my way lost in awe
yet branded in my mind.

There was another world—
girls in town to think about
up and down the Sierra’s spine,
Wolfman Jack on the transistor,
boss and soul, rock and roll
for company by the fire.

I called to faraway faces
over falling starlit peaks,
the granite scree glittering
into Tamarack timberlines
as I lay down each night
to dream on solid ground.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged awe, mules, packer, Sierra's Spine, Wolfman Jack

APPLE ORCHARD BRANDING 2016

Posted on January 13, 2016 by John | Leave a comment

Like the old days, hillsides
slick and wet, we brand
between rains, hurried loops

neighbor-to-neighbor, each
bunch a hard-won victory
for work-worn bones.

Morning Advil or Aleve
for squeaky hinges
lubricated with a plastic cup

of Crown, hot meal grinning
with good company.
For a moment we are young again,

but with muted bravado—understand
Tony’s deadpan disappointment:
tonight’s storm retreating north.

Not quite the coup to drink whiskey to,
we want more sore evenings
by the fire, just to hear it pour.

THE GOOD SIGNS

Posted on January 11, 2016 by John | 3 comments

Sunday evening, pickup loads of snow
file down the road to town: snowmen
for Visalia, Exeter, Farmersville front yards

to melt and soak into drought-brown lawns
no one’s mowed in years—a hurried
shortcut from mountains to Valley

upon a crumbling blacktop channel—
water that these oaks and sycamores
see only as lumps of white passing at fifty.

The west and south slopes fill-in
with green, purple patches of frost-bitten
filaree that looked like bare dirt,

softly embrace us now as if we were cattle.
Too wet for work that waits outside,
we slowly release winters of urgency

camped at the door and ease into the
vaguely familiar—reacquaint ourselves
with mud and rain, with one another.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged filaree, grass, snow, water, winter

GIFT, OCTOBER 2011

Posted on January 9, 2016 by John | 10 comments

Bumper crop of acorns,
warm monsoon rains.
The redbud bloomed

confused, drawing butterflies
for weeks—the season’s
last hatch of Monarchs

swarming crimson, orange
and black-trimmed fairies
to the front door.

All a sign of something
unusual, uniquely beautiful—
that superfluous imbalance

charged to an unknown
future—a fleeting gift
to remember the gods

before leaving us
four years dry and begging
for something normal.

Weekly Photo Challenge: “Weightless” Monarchs

Weather Journal 2011-12

Rainfall History

10 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

Tagged Acorns, Drought, gods, Monarch Butterfly, Redbud, signs, weekly-photo-challenge

HOMEMAKING

Posted on January 8, 2016 by John | 3 comments

                                   Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies
                                   only the five senses that we know perish with him,
                                   and the other ninety-five remain alive.
                                             – Anton Chekhov (“The Cherry Orchard”)

The past walks here, all the dead
horses and livestock men grazing
a hundred and fifty springs—

all the promises and passion spilled
upon this wild mat of grass and flowers,
naked lovers idly pinching petals

along the creek for centuries
within the mottled shade
these same trees have cast, yet see

to keep alive. We have had
our moments here, left ourselves
so wholly that we rise and rest

among them, add our song
to the canyon, our cries to the sky
to forever make our home.

I’ve ordered the paper for a new chapbook I hope to put together on rainy days before Elko, instead of the larger collection with a working title of BEST OF THE DRY YEARS, that I just wasn’t happy enough with to complete, needing yet the more normal perspective of some rain.

This poem and photo have appeared here previously, but not on the same page. HOMEMAKING is the title, this photo on the cover (as of this morning). I truly love formatting these chapbooks, rereading and editing some good poems in this one for the past two days.