Category Archives: Ranch Journal

THE GIRLS

Posted on June 22, 2015 by John | 8 comments

Horseback, the girls work
cattle in the dust, sort cows
from calves before hauling

off the hill to the weaning pen:
a quiet dance to a rhythm
I can only see through boards

as cows ask with their eyes
before moving towards the open
space a horse has made

to leave their calves behind.
No loud bravado spurring
pirouettes into dirt clouds.

I turn away and walk
to the pickups and goosenecks—
remove my maleness

from these corrals that hold
a hundred years of urgent
echoes: men making mistakes

to invent new profanities.
Instead, the perfect sense
of girls instructing girls.

8 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

Tagged cows, girls

SOLSTICE DREAMS, 2015

Posted on June 21, 2015 by John | 2 comments

My pagan sunrise hangs over the black ridge
reaching for the saddle this side of Sulphur
Peak with blinding light, this native place

where women healed themselves—to endure
this longest day of hundred degree heat.
Each day shorter, we move with confidence

towards October, imagine gusts beneath
dark clouds that bring the storm gods closer
to bless this dry and dusty dirt with rain.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

Tagged solstice, Sulphur Peak, summer, sunrise

VISITATIONS

Posted on June 18, 2015 by John | 2 comments

I wake to dreams running
with Japhy Rider glowing old,
each awakening begins

a new act, a new setting,
new and easy conversations,
and we are grinning.

I am small in all this,
absorbing each moment
as it unfolds, and fall

into that fuzzy parallel plane
where souls gather,
the dead and alive—

where scientists and governments
cannot touch the caring core
of humanity, where Wall Street

wanes. I wonder now awake
if he remembers me
from last night’s sleep.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

Tagged Dharma Bums, DREAMS, Gary Snyder, Humanity, Japhy Rider

BEFORE SOLSTICE

Posted on June 17, 2015 by John | 4 comments

Outside, early summer heat stifles
the mind, bakes a hard crust
upon the brain beneath straw lids—

eyes roll and detach within flashes
of white light, falling towards delirium:
I cannot breathe or see connections,

I cannot think, I cannot write.
Small comfort that I am not alone
within this fuzzy circumstance.

Harassed by a squadron kingbirds,
a Great Blue glides and lights
upon the gravel, stands tall

to claim any open space,
grounded for battle. All supposed
sentiments have escaped to shade,

gone north to cooler climes.
Summer in the San Joaquin,
a damn hard time to write.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

Tagged Great Blue Heron, kingbirds, summer, writing

BLACK CAP

Posted on June 13, 2015 by John | 8 comments

Selected to stay,
to be bred and have babies,
we must give them names.

8 Comments

Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged cattle, cows, Replacement Heifers

Reflections on Terminus Dam

Posted on June 9, 2015 by John | 3 comments

I was about eleven years old when the US Army Corps of Engineers began construction on Terminus Dam, named, I presume, for the end of the Visalia Electric Railroad line where a resort of sorts was established at Terminus Beach for local music and all-night dancing during the summer. There was also a nine hole sand golf course in the area of this irrigation pond, north of the river, that was accessed by a footbridge across the Kaweah during the 30s. All was erased during the 1955 Flood. The family was embroiled in a Condemnation Action with the Federal government shortly thereafter. Construction was completed in 1962.

Terminus Dam

Currently at less than 25% capacity because of the drought, it was unnerving for me as a teenager working downstream when Lake Kaweah was full.