drycrikjournal

Most summer days, the mountains are opaque,
flat and fuzzy from Visalia, from the irrigated
fields they have become, steaming beneath them—

silt and snowmelt settling into verdant orchards
between a grid of decomposing roads. Too much
close-up to notice where our bounties begin,

the Sierras cease to exist—blurred, faded in the haze.
I was one once, a would-be mountain man, a child
chasing fish upstream to the heavy breathing

of the river and me, of the breeze in cedar dreams,
eyes upon the water, in the eddies along the cutbanks
where all the long, dark shadows I wanted, waited.

Across Chagoopa’s desert sands, a long time camps
within the jingling rhythm of a string of mules,
when a boy begins to talk to himself, tries to be

interesting and honest with nothing but reality
decomposing for steep miles around him. Always
the same, up or down the Big Arroyo, he leaves

part of the conversation there. It marks the trail
where tracks are erased and scent posts wane,
only to be revisited and revived, a lifetime away.

                                       There are some canyons
                                       we might use again
                                       sometime.
                                                  – William Stafford (“Indian Caves in the Dry Country”)

The world may try to end, or after the final battle sorts
good and evil, or when the cogs in the Mayan clock
lock, there will be strays that escape the global gather—

names overlooked in the book of life, or just plain missed
by the crew of angels in new outfits on their first trail ride.
It won’t be perfect. If the earth winds down or the sun

goes static, spotless in this universe, some will adapt
to the lack of plenty in an empty world. We will learn
to breathe clean air, find springs tapped into the Tertiary

and survive with another batch of birds and flowers—
little Edens, here and there, in the wasteland—but
we will never be the same again. Imagine all

the fresh colors and species bent to wild attractions,
geared to breed and seed, beckoning like iridescent
kaleidoscopes, pulsing with a lust to succeed.

We will start over. What knowledge we begin with
will become myth, eventually forgotten and unnecessary.
But there are some canyons we might use again sometime.

Somehow, we’ve lost it—
farmed-out the feeling
to new immigrants
and the less fortunate
at minimum wage, or to
more eager hands overseas.

We have forgotten that
we came from the fields
before horsepower spit fire,
and from the characters
bent dawn ‘til dusk
to get the harvest in—

all the monotonous
that fed the livestock
and themselves, back
when calloused hands
moved on their own
and our minds ran free.

I can tell you now, the future will take
a shape you won’t recognize—and you may,
as well, become someone caught in the current
far from here. These things are what they are,

but the ground is real, these hills and trees,
these fractured rocks in piles that haven’t
moved much, some with more speckled red
and yellow lichen laughing fire at the sun,

canyons running water when it rains, tree frogs
in spring. It is another world when you turn
uphill, turn your back on the dramas playing
to every face in town, plots distorted still.

At the mouth of every canyon, a Redtail
will glide quietly over you, feathers upturned,
land in an oak to read who you are. Ground
squirrels will still be chasing one another

in the grass—so many stems and flowers.
Buckeyes and sycamores, never giving-up,
old oaks like moss clinging to the north
slopes—acorns claiming space to survive

apart from it all, a ring at a time until
they become hollow homes for bugs and birds.
You will need to be familiar with what’s real
to find who you are when you go there.

Some get along
better than others
pressed into feedlots,
onto the highways
and into trucks—

they seem to adjust
to more in less space,
drawn closer
into tighter communities:
hot breath and smells

of food and waste.
Some know no better,
always raised on hay
and grain, and wait
in lines to be fed.

And some get along
better than others
left mostly alone
with the real work—
feeding themselves.