DURABLE

Posted on May 19, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

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We meet at the end
               of generations
               of pioneers
               here
               after 160 years,

               all related since
               that first local election
               cast by 27 men—

               the tie broken
               by a trapper
               from Dry Creek

               wined and dined
               at Nate Vise’s fort
               a week before the vote.

Mom and pop cow outfits and farmers,
we tend and claim our space—
               our own language
               and hands-on humor
               handed down
               by surviving

               miscalculations.
               More and more
               we lean on
               the old sayings
               we were raised
               to recite.

Most of what we know
               we learned
               the hard way

               about ourselves—
               but most of all
               we’ve learned to laugh
                              at change
                              at last.

 

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Posted in Photographs

Weaning

Posted on May 18, 2016 by | 3 comments

 

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Gathering our lower country, we’ve begun weaning our calves where they’ll ‘soak’ in two different corrals for a week before the steers go to the auction yard in Visalia. The heifer calves will go to the irrigated pasture, open to plenty of dry feed, until the replacements are sorted in July.

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This year, after separating the calves from their mothers, we processed all with Inforce 3, a respiratory booster to the vaccination received at branding that is administered nasally. It acts immediately and should relieve any respiratory problems during the stress of weaning. Also, the calves received a topical dose of Cylence for the control of flies. Due to the tall dry feed, we had a number of eye problems, primarily foxtails that we doctored as we processed them.

All of these calves were sired by Vintage Angus bulls and weighed an average of 700 lbs., the heaviest to date from our lower country. We are pleased, of course, with their weights, but happier yet to get started with our weaning. Lots of music in the canyon, cows and calves bawling for one another.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

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IDES OF MAY

Posted on May 16, 2016 by | 6 comments

 

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We begin to gather
all the good news
showered upon us
from the sky,
harvest the grass
in the flesh of calves,
and like every year
we will weigh them,
measure our good fortune
with a number
to judge a season by.

We will turn the cows out
back to grass, back to homes
they’ve made on ground
good for little else
but wildlife—four-month
vacation with the girls
gossiping in the shade
without bulls
or nagging children
to disturb them.

Not a bad life
when it rains.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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EAGLE EYE

Posted on May 15, 2016 by | 3 comments

 

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Cultivating a native life,
we pause for totems,
let them tell us
what they think—
who they are.

Some count on us
to stir the grass
and follow,
and some to listen
when we drink
coffee or wine
outside.

Claiming the roost
of loving crow mates,
a Golden Eagle lights
for a closer look at us—
and we are blessed.

Finding his feather
left ahead,
we believe
in something
more common
of the wild,

of talismans
from moments
we never forget
and hope to leave
as much.

 

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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RACISTS

Posted on May 12, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

Photo: Terri Blanke

Photo: Terri Drewry

 

In a world tall with grasses,
wild oats and rosy thatches
of dry filaree, we seldom see

our feet upon the earth.
In frequented places
like water troughs and barns,

like vegetable gardens
saving trips to town,
we are prejudiced—

react without a thought
against a race of snakes
that want no trouble

to claim the space
in which we travel
with a shovel.

                                    for Terri

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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THE MOUNTAINS

Posted on May 11, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

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At their feet, I must leave home—
the house, the canyon, to see them.
At the overpass between Exeter

and Visalia, when at cloudy dawn
they became my mother’s rumpled
bedclothes as she courted death,

the Sierras cloaked in a gossamer mist
that embraced me. Or just south
of Lemon Cove, up the Kaweah’s long,

open throat, sharp-toothed peaks
of granite scree reach for the sky,
changing moods in every light.

A man must have mountains
to shed the nonsense to get to—
a distant and steep ascent

for the spirit, soul and flesh—
a place safe to wander fire to fire,
star to star, to drink from snowmelt.

Wide arms open, they welcome me
as I come home from town
to lay down at their wrinkled feet.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016

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OLD SADDLE

Posted on May 9, 2016 by | 5 comments

 

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Long stiff with the sweat of years,
I see myself beneath its dust, retired
from the common ignorance of haste.

All the timed events, all the wild cattle
made by the chase are scars etched
in fragile leather, some in my brain

as sweet memories of riding high,
shoulder to shoulder in the gather
of good men shaped by this landscape

that will outlast us in the end. Too soon
old, they say, too late wise, I could
always have taken better care of time,

thrown away the watches and clocks
and invested it in the real observation
of other living things—even the smallest

of which has a mission to teach us
the hard way. And what I fail to see—
this slow creak of bones will illuminate.

 

5 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016

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RAINBOW TROUT

Posted on May 7, 2016 by | 4 comments

 

If you are a fish
you find an eddy
behind a boulder

or a cutbank
shadowed
by a tree root

where Snallygasters
ride the current
snowmelt.

We swim upstream
for the perfect place
to make our livings—

where rivers start
close to the stars,
deep in the pines,

where water falls
fast and cold
all year long—

but always swimming
against the flow
just to hold our own.

 

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Posted in Poems 2016

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GRAPES IN BLOOM

Posted on May 6, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

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Muggy morning beneath a raft of clouds
docked against the Sierras steals molecules
of oxygen beside the last hole dug for granddad’s

gravel that now traps tailwater from the pasture
in the summer, its dark, stagnant pool teams
with amoeba and paramecium, a fermenting

stench swum only by cormorants and mud hens.
Sweet fragrance on a gust startles my senses
to search the dry grass for color, tree limbs

for blossoms from willow to sycamore,
blackberry to cottonwood, but none in flower
before the forecast Mother’s Day thunderstorms.

Perfumed tendrils cling like Christmas lights
from branches and I am drenched, taste damp
sweetness as I become wild grapes in bloom.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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STRESS TEST

Posted on May 5, 2016 by | 4 comments

 

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Everyone is old or fat
like feed bunk cattle
sorted to a pen to wait
for the magic of machines
to screen the heart—
the pump and pipelines
to mind and flesh.

In the 60s I was sure
I’d never see thirty,
made no plans past the Draft
on the other side of tomorrow.

The army trained her
for Desert Storm
right out of high school.
She shaves my chest,
connects the wires.

                    Knees squeak,
                    feet clop,
                    fast at first,
                    slow to find
                    a longer stride
                    on the treadmill.

From the sidelines,
a new team on the field
to keep the machinery
running a little longer,
another election to survive
like all the rest.

I drive home lightheaded,
endorphins mixed
with a muggy sky,
chance of thunderstorms
and fire, now that we have grass—
wild oats over my head.

No straight line,
the road to here
ricocheted with heart,
a flush of passion
left at every curve
I cannot measure,
barely remember
as reducing stress.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016

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