drycrikjournal

                           I dress first putting on my socks,
                           Then my shirt—I need good habits.
                                               – Gary Soto (“Dr. Freud, Please”)

I never understood what drove him
to irrigate his grapes at sixty-eight.
We could set our watches to the minute

he passed by, mouthing new soliloquies
as another summer morning broke
in the shadow of the Sierras, or

at the end of vine rows, hoe in hand
at dusk, a silhouette with swashbuckling
overshoes titling at time, when

he could have paid a good man well
to do the job—until recently. Of all
the things I claimed I’d never be

like my father, I wear trails in the dirt
checking calves that don’t need me,
lest I forget my way—carving circles

in dreams that wake me to write
about how we got the harvest in the shed—
my young Gary Soto days bent beneath

a hazy San Joaquin Valley sun. Even
the old dog marks a track to encircle
the house and barks into the night.

                                        A stumblebum in scree.
                                                            – James Galvin (“The Heart”)

We write poetry, yet there are no rules,
no maps, no guarantees on our circumambulation
of loose time stacked, moment upon moment with

a stray epiphany. Traversing the fractured granite
boulders big as hay bales in Dead Man’s Canyon
to fish upstream, I found an old blue bottle

intact, placed it upon a rock for my way back
to camp on Roaring River nearly forty years ago.
The blue upon the speckled gray was like a beacon

that I forgot casting down the other side. The heart
is like that in the mountains, always leaping ahead,
easily sidetracked by reason. Surely someone

found and packed it home full of memories, perhaps
even placed it on the mantle above their fire—
my fragile blue bottle of hope for all I cannot see.

They’ve turned the heat up in October,
a few ambitious gods returning to the fire
to bake one last dessert sprinkled with acorn

crumbles for the quail—shook the oak tree
like a bear before the feed truck groaned uphill
for cows and babies hoping for relief. Top notches

bobbing in the road stir the Cooper’s Hawk to leap
and glide, a silent missile in and out of shadows.
Three rows of two stacked on edge ahead of six

flat butterflied, then capped and tied by three
more: twenty-two bales twice, engineered
for the short bed in the shower. Everyone

is on the acorns. Feral hogs and deer, first calvers,
bulls, next year’s heifers—even the saddlehorses
prune the blue oaks, woodpeckers having filled

every crack and bullet hole with a bumper crop,
ready for a hard winter. Jars of cerise pomegranate
jelly put up on the counter, it’s feeding time.

October takes all morning to dress,
scatters color after rain and leaves
her trail of indecision in low light

upon the ground—her closet full
of fading greens catches fire. Alas,
she has nothing left to wear, but

bright embers stirred to cover her
damp, brown skin like sequins.
Mesmerized, I wait beneath hillsides

of bare Blue Oaks for the first freeze
and good rain, for the long-limbed
Sycamores to dance naked in the creek.