For the Birds

Posted on August 18, 2020 by | 1 comment

 

 

A pair of precocious little gray birds I’ve never noticed before have spent the summer with Robbin and me, drinking several times a day at the dog’s water on the deck. Smaller than our Western Flycatcher and with a slight crown like a Kingbird, we assumed they were juveniles. At 111 degrees they water more frequently now, arriving open beaked, the female seems shier and more bedraggled than the male. The best ID I can come up with is that they are Wood Pewees, but I defer to others more qualified.

Besides the livestock water troughs that are difficult for many birds to drink from, our inadvertent plumbing leaks draw a wide variety of birds from all around. Now that the spring Bird Wars are over, a territorial drama where the eggs and babies of one nest feed the babies of a larger species, they seem to have found peace in the shade of our yard. Woodpeckers cling to sprinkler heads to get a drop at a time, coveys of quail include a pipeline leak on their daily rounds and Towhees cool beneath the mist of our garden irrigation. It’s quite a show if you can stand to be outside.

 

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NATIVE

Posted on August 17, 2020 by | 6 comments

 

 

You can almost smell them curled
asleep or stretched across smooth rocks,
shining shades of earth, charming

and deadly. They don’t want trouble,
come home each year to make a living,
to together stand above the grasses

wrapped in urgent procreation
as the dry seeds roll in painted gourds—
the dance begins, as they collapse

and rise again. To stay connected,
I’m told that the penis is shaped
like a T —barbs both sides— and

that she can draw upon the sperm
as needed for years. Generations
of brothers and sisters know

their way home. Grandmothers
carry the future and grandfathers watch
and listen, crawl into your mind

to know your secrets, to hear
your confessions to all the ridgeline
men long-gone before you.

 

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More Ramblin’ Jack – “Diamond Joe”

Posted on August 9, 2020 by | 1 comment

 

 

“Diamond Joe”

 

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Happy Birthday Ramblin’ Jack

Posted on August 8, 2020 by | 5 comments

 

 

The message from Aiyanna Elliott was sketchy other than Jack was having a birthday. By August 1st I learned the date on Facebook. The folk music legend and two-time Grammy winner just turned 89.

In the fall of my freshman year at USC (1966) some friends and I went to see Jack at the Ashgrove, $2 cover and 2-drink minimum. It was a fantastic show, as close as I ever was to being home while going to school in L.A.

I ran into Jack again in 1989, my first invitation to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko. We’ve been fast friends ever since. Beginning with traveling and playing with Woodie Guthrie to the present, he has been an inspirational influence on folk music. In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Jack the National Medal of the Arts, proclaiming, “In giving new life to our most valuable musical traditions, Ramblin’ Jack has himself become an American treasure.”

Though Jack has been to the ranch several times, the photo above was taken here in September 2008. Jack had a few gigs at some colleges inland from the Gulf of Mexico during hurricane season. He called to see if he could layover here at the ranch until either Gustav or Ike (I can’t remember which) made landfall, thus having four hours of driving time behind him. He stayed with Robbin and I for a few days while waiting to see which gigs would be canceled.

To one of the kindest souls we know, Robbin and I wish Ramblin’ Jack a belated Happy Birthday!

 

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THIN FILAMENT

Posted on August 7, 2020 by | Leave a comment

 

 

Wild entanglements
clutch the fate of the planet
with thin filament.

 

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Bangs Vaccinations

Posted on August 4, 2020 by | 2 comments

 

 

With recent temperatures peaking around 105°, we left the house with headlights early yesterday to Bangs vaccinate 99 head of this year’s heifer calves after making the sort last week. While we waited for yesterday’s 7:00 a.m. appointment with our veterinarian, we decided to keep them on the irrigated pasture close to the corrals, knowing we risked a mix-up with their older sisters, separated only by a barbed wire fence. Something spooked the 99 in a corner under the shade of the Valley Oak on Saturday and they laid the fence down. So we had two bunches to gather and sort before the vet showed.

The vaccination named for Danish veterinarian Bernhard Bangs is to protect against Brucellosis that also infects Bison and Elk, where the greatest concentration of the disease is in the Yellowstone area. Furthermore, female cattle cannot be shipped out of California without proof of a Bangs vaccination that includes a tattoo and metal ear tag that needs to be administered by a vet before the calf is a year old.

But it went smoothly. Bob had most of the 99 baited into the corrals before we arrived and was working on the second bunch of 50 bred heifers as the girls unloaded their horses. Our heifers are gentle. The sort and processing were trouble free—a booster round of calf vaccinations plus the Bangs, injectable wormer and mineral supplement. All done by 8:30 a.m. without hurrying—a great day!

Aiming to keep 50 replacement heifers from the 99, we will make another sort in 4-6 weeks.

 

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MICROCOSM

Posted on August 2, 2020 by | 1 comment

 

 

                  It was impossible to make it through the tragedy
                 Without poetry.
                      – Joy Harjo (“Becoming Seventy”)

This other world of cows and calves,
of motherhood exemplified, and bulls,
like men, trailing wire of down fences

is yet to be expected. A bumper crop
of rodents and snakes surround us,
the full moon coyote count of duets

and trios draws closer around us
in the half-light. The metaphors
and similes come easily to favor

humanity ‘midst the tragic chaos
where the latest issue of the truth
has come to be disbelieved.

 

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TOP SHELF

Posted on July 26, 2020 by | 6 comments

 

 

Sometimes I sell ‘em ten bucks at a time, but mostly
when I give ‘em away to friends, I tell ‘em
like I tole Baxter a few months after he signed
“Croutons on a Cowpie” for me years ago in Elko

where all the cowboy singers and poets meet
in the dead of winter, everbody huggin and shakin hands
like famly, new boots and silver glinting coin piled
in rooms like warm cocoons to listen, safe from the outside

news, just to sing and tell stories with roughshod poetry.
First time I went in ’89 to read my stuff I was skairt
until I run into Ramblin Jack who I hadn’t seen since ’66
at the Ashgrove, plumb skairt ever since Sunday school

stage plays screwed my face up so tight to where
I couldn’t say my lines. But seein Jack made ever thing
all right. Now that Baxter’s older, he understands
that it was a compliment, ‘specially since he’s a vet

and knows how the body sometimes works best
when the brain is busy with something else,
busy and out of the way of regular business.
I wrote to Baxter that I’d took his book off my desk,

pulled it out from under loose stacks of poetry
for my top shelf—so I mean it when I tell ‘em
my poems are mostly short and will work best
if you take and leave ‘em in the bathroom.

               for George Perreault and “Bodark County”

 

 

BODARK COUNTY

 

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SURROUNDED BY SQUIRRELS

Posted on July 18, 2020 by | 2 comments

 

 

Having slain hundreds, another battalion digs in
to undermine the well and water trough, to scout
the garden for an attack on the last tomatoes.

The quail have made a comeback in coveys,
strings of babies trailing on training wheels
making circles, mornings and evenings.

Before our eyes, another lifelong mate
in the making, Roadrunners packing lizards
and snails to their nest in prickly pear cactus.

The heavy-limbed sycamores shade a ribbon
of green along the dry creek bed, sub-irrigated
Bermuda grass a few bulls graze between bellowing.

Black cows shine on a side-hill grade, either side
of the canyon, or silhouettes in shade gossiping
and grinding cud, having shed their babies.

SUVs, RVs, camp trailers and fifth-wheels
escape the confinement of cities to dodge Covid-19
and logging trucks on a narrow mountain road

to the pines, and I don’t blame them—with
a thousand ways to go, why not migrate
where no one seems to worry about dying.

 

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IDES OF JULY 2020

Posted on July 16, 2020 by | 1 comment

 

 

                              There is an easy beauty in the bronze statues
                              dredged up from the ocean, but there is a worth
                              to the unshapely our sweet mind founders on.
                                             – Jack Gilbert (“The Secret”)

Even the old fence posts, split redwood
from the coast eighty years ago,
serve a purpose more than by design,

unexpected dividends through a lifetime
that can’t be spent or bartered—saved only
in our minds. I had stopped to photograph

the White Tailed Kite’s extended hovering,
treading air against gravity while searching
dry, blond grasses for the movement of a mouse—

expending more energy, it seemed, than a rodent
could provide. My feet grow heavy now
as I circumambulate this uneven ground

following seasons of grass with cows and calves,
praying for relief of flood or drought, hoping
to generate enough to do it all over again.

 

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