drycrikjournal

Overnight, an iridescent, lime green
overwhelms hillsides and canyons
with tender leaves, feathers flushed
upon the gnarled limbs and boney twigs

of Blue Oaks pulsing with spring—
with life reborn, fresh as garden salads,
tropical pockets of overlapping greens
where armies of gray skeletons stood

anchored in the hard clay and granite
with centuries of faith in a rain.
Overnight, we are saved—believers
in storms from heaven, once again.

I admire the quest of mathematics
its one right answer to fit every occasion,
its audacity to forecast the future
with percentages, like the weather,
but question its utility when predicting
human nature in its race with science.

One might hope we regress to spurn
speed and comfort their diversions,
make each step count for something
solid, as each immeasurable moment
takes the shape of living truth—always
starting or finishing for someone.

They have lived here,
come evenings to listen
to our cocktail conversations
from the water trough and well—
distant silhouettes leaning
like lovers on the pipe rail,
totems we have mistaken
for ravens for years, until
their closer inspection:

lifting off at near dark,
he in the lead, feathers
shining blacker than night,
and she, grayer, trailing
for a closer look
at the two of us
watching this gesture
and wondering.

They are in love
atop the skeleton
of the once Live Oak
growing out of the knoll
when women came
for healing—upon
the highest branch,
she preens his back
                with her beak,
nuzzles his shiny breast
                with her head
as he crows—moans
                Caw-wee-ahh.

March 18, 2012

We stay busy and believe
in rain to save the grass—

                 if we work hard,
                 keep our fences up
                 and cattle home.

Only the native and naïve
keep these gods pleased,

                 investing lifetimes
                 without contracts
                 or guarantees.

We know no better,
no other way for us all

                 to stay alive—
                 and still believe
                 rain will survive.

Looking away from the fire:

                    irons at rest among coals
                    in a pocket fallen forward
                    from limb wood licked,
                    consumed by colored veils
                    of dancing flames
                    between calves, hoots
                    and loops, stretched,
                    rolled and released—
                    we see they find their way
                    without us, despite us,
                    mothers waiting at the gate.

Near hawks atop leafless oaks
watch as if we weren’t here, bored
with the horse and human intrusion,
from the lifeless trucks and trailers
claiming space for the moment,
shadowing ground and grass—
scattered like discarded toys.

Knotted trunk, creek bank sycamore,
has lost several centuries of limbs
and seen more in its own failed reach,
enduring droughts and floods,
than in our short stretch of time.

This pattern we can’t ignore—this
constant readjustment of elements
that tests the best of human natures.

It is the rural way, the hands-on explanation
of work, of time invested or squandered
in pursuit of peace for a fleeting moment—
if only an adieu to the bone-weary gloaming

                      as she pulls her covers up,
                      as the dogs make their circle
                      of scent posts, and as the cows
                      call their calves together

to welcome darkness. A separate species
of farm and range, of fence and tree row,
of the harvest, track and furrow following
each season of the sun for the life of the soil,

for our time on this earth, we speak
the universal sign of gestures and looks,
in secret code that unlocks local sayings,
the un-riddled truisms that begin and end

the legends that muddled here before us,
and found their way to offer progeny:
an ever-changing strain of human beings
that listens for the hymns of the old ways.

This is our church, our adaptable Divinity
that transcends all things to expose grace
to a slowing metronome plodding home—
a prolonged rapture towards the end of days.