drycrikjournal

Robbin tells me the story Charlie told her,
on his way to Mariposa, Chukchansi
drummer for a jazz band thirty years or more.

Retired forester, he told me how his grandmother
sent him up oak trees to shake limbs from acorns
like a little bear—the animals taught us how to live.

His wife is Chukchansi too, knows Sylvia, neither
of whom participate in the proceeds of the casino
beneath Yosemite—don’t have the lineage to fit

tribal politics. One day her grandmother found
a well-rode horse in her empty corral with a note:
Look under rock. All-sized rocks everywhere,

she finally found some money, fed and cared
for the horse until it disappeared, replaced
by others with money left under the rock.

It was a mystery for years after the Mexican
bandit’s head was hauled in alcohol, displayed
in Stockton for a dollar-a-look, after the Rangers

got their five thousand and Arroyo de Cantua
became a historical landmark—but Murietta’s
sister claimed it was not her brother’s face.

en.wikipedia.org

thelastbestwest.com

I have lost track of the circus
—Wall Street, Washington and Cairo—
traveling round the globe, elephants
raising tents for another clown show.

When I was a kid it was communists,
socialists with big hearts feeding a world
in line for their daily ration, a man couldn’t
get ahead—do no better than the next.

We were afraid of Khrushchev, and Castro—
stirred-up like squirrels-in-spring digging
bomb shelters for generals a long ways
from nuclear warheads and missile silos.

Slim Pickens fanning his hat, spurring
our last act all the way to down to the earth.
A Cold War warmed-up in Vietnam,
and we became the enemy at Kent State.

These old oaks, nearly leafless, arms
turned-up like natives ready for a rain
take human shape in our dry delirium,
searching for sign, for that detail

that might unlock it all, help us
understand. Nearly naked, dry sycamore
leaves carpet the creek bank, the sun
ignites white trunks—it’s beautiful

without the rain, and somehow cows
and calves are fat. No one complains
or prays beneath this high-pressure haze—
we just watch and wait for the next storm.

There is no need to measure time
in prolonged moments of routine—
old hands remembering rope and rein

at Mankins Flat, branding calves,
a porch of land open to the Kaweah
peaks, bared granite teeth cutting sky.

Earl with another twenty stories
etched I’ve never heard before,
our history in his head, all the forgotten

characters and landmarks removed
with horses, dogs and trees—
Onus Brown with Brewer looking down

upon the Valley across to the Coast Range.
Some call this work, menial and mundane
in this un-commonplace they’ll never be.

The places we save in our mind—
or perhaps branded with emotion
pulled into a landscape and left

for another: my first grandfather
oak, wide arms outstretched, round
dark boulders piled at his feet, burrows

for squirrels beneath his roots, a Red
Tail roost. He seemed to see all things,
season after season. I visited him often

when I was a boy exploring wild miles
from home. The earth still comes alive
with characters, looking a little human,

but without the heavy baggage pressed
into the generic form, more flexible
and illusive, more demanding than

the idiocies of man. They are all saved
and waiting to spring before me
when I am too old, or gone to earth.

No smoke, no bright Hudson Bay
colored stripes, stirring flames,
we look outside to gray silhouettes

of ridges hazed away, still dry
and waiting for any kind of rain.
Oak leaves and twigs in the dark,

split cordwood aflame, you kept
the coals alive for a week, ready
for warm words anytime of day.

You are forever exposed there
in the camera of our minds—
huddled together stirring flames.

                                              for Jess & Bodhi

I fall asleep assembling lines
I can’t remember, nod off content,
refusing to memorize the moment
ever-changing in the distance.

We began our thank yous
with apologies, with petals open
to brighten a cold day when ashes
had cooled on the mountain, branding
irons put away. And it could have been
warm food and whiskey infiltrating
our hard cores and callused truths,
blaze to blaze on trees, we see the light
on the edge of the forest and the fleeting
silhouettes of our wild gods giggling
with their latest game of circumstance—
and purpose—thank God for that!

                                                            for Clarence and Frances

__________________________________________

Link to a pleasing, parallel poem from my daughter that independently touches the same moment:

“Traveling the Seam”

Restless after family come together for the holidays,
I can see the top wire stretched and sagging near
the gate we hung, still green and shiny in the Blue Oaks

between Sulphur and the Top—look into this morning’s
black, eager to repair. Or the down gate, Live Oak post
slipping its loop between the Top and Buckeye—

the balancing of bulls, renegotiating reasons for
a breeding plan, mixing and stirring cows and calves.
Or the stretch of down wire below Railroad, leaking

cattle last time gathered, and the leafless Live Oak
grown naked in the fence at the Turtle Pond—all
need my attention, chain saw, hay and a little luck

packed into the Kubota—off to get something done
before the Doctor reads the results of last week’s tests.
My best work in the dark, my face can’t take the sun.

                                                                                for Bob