Category Archives: Ranch Journal

“I Wish It Would Rain”

The trailing end of a storm front that brought heavy rains to the Pacific Northwest lingered along our Sierra Nevada foothills all of yesterday, keeping temperatures in the mid-70s beneath dry, but fairly constant, cloud cover. The below-60° chill lasted well into the morning, a winter feel that made us want a fire. A near-perfect day as Robbin was playing and singing a Nanci Griffeth song in the other room while I was at my desk.

Humor us:

With the weather change, testosterone levels down at the bull pen (Go Giants!) have elevated a notch leaving me substantial fence to fix after they ostracized a young bull into our buffer zone between the cows and calves. Though he was the loser, he had found his way to the cows nevertheless, 30 days early — leaving a another job for today after we finish feeding.

The Internet weather prognosticators are still holding to fair chance of a 1/2-inch rain for Halloween:

Forecast

Until then, we wish it would rain.

 

PILLOW FIGHT

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Heron ripped from the sky,
gray feathers hard ground—
an eagle’s trail remains.

 

 

REGAL (3030)

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We know the ones up-close,
go looking when they’re missing
from the bunch lined-out on hay.

Most girls like their privacy,
find draws of rock and brush
that feel good, secure apart

from any other day. It changes
them, this first motherhood—
some find the carriage of a queen.

 

 

DUST AT DAWN

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In a cloud, horseplay rising
from a two-year drought—
time to feed to breathe.

 

 

WPC(4) — “Refraction”

WISHFUL THINKING

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Horse short of wet at dawn,
cattle get the crop of green—
we mow the lawn.

 

 

WPC(3) — “Refraction”

SIGNIFICANT IMPACT

 
So bare, this pasture, you can
see a ground squirrel running
at 300 yards, just ahead

of his light-brown dust trail
streaming to join the dirty air.
Much fewer now with no grass

since their bumper crop last spring,
no place to hide but in a hole
from coyotes, bobcats and hawks.

So bare, these hillsides rising
in dawn’s first light, silhouettes
of cows and calves in clouds

walking off the tops of ridges,
ambling from the high stubble
towards the only water

for a mile along the creekbed
of dry sand and cobbles, sycamores
dressing early for Halloween.

Sixty years ago, an old man
with dirty hands and hat,
bib overalls and grease

whittled a willow-fork
to show me how and where
he was going to drill.

 

BASIC STUFF

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Writing poetry in the dark
before moving cows
and fresh calves
to better pasture,
I ask about the weather
on TV I’ve missed
over a weekend of
making more from less water
while you’ve planted seeds
for a fall garden—more
hopeful than ever before.

You say, ‘More of the same
for the next few days, cooler.’
Two years of dust and drought
have worn us down to basic stuff—
and we like what we see
in one another.

 

COLOR WITHOUT DETAIL

 
Under split nails and ground into our hides,
we wear our work—we carry it in our lungs
without shame or regret like grazing beasts

of the field, harvesting hillsides, plodding
from water to shade—ever-trusting in change:
the miracle of clouds packing oceans of rain.

Circles with hay, ruts of dust deep in tracks
up mountains and through brittle canyons—
it boils, rising behind us in trailing clouds,

each particle prepared for a new beginning.
We leave the gates open to any water, any
collection seeping from the cracked granite

heart of these hills, our flesh, for a drink.
The unabashed, dusty gazette of soft trails
leading to each distant water trough

prints last night’s news, distributed far
and wide, but much the same—yet we cling
to fuzzy dreams of green without detail.

 

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WPC(3) — “Dreamy”

 

PROCESS

 
Down at the County Seat they have believed
big is better, in growth before maintenance
to attain full-employment and prosperity,

hoping for crumbs from corporate plates—
our wide-eyed chiefs hypnotized
by shiny beads and synthetic blankets.

The colonial model has arrived
for one last, lasting extraction from the land
leaving it useless, ripped naked—its precious,

fresh water exposed for fifty years
of the same reasoning and excuses
for following the wrong dream.

Few people learn from their own mistakes,
and fewer yet from the mistakes of others—
but not admitting them is just plain ignorance.

 

 

Valley Voice: Cemex Lemon Cove

Valley Voice: Cemex McKay’s Point

AMERICAN GOLDFINCH, RAGLE SPRINGS

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The wild flocks
to spring water, to man’s sweat
and galvanized intrusions.