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RECKONING is printed in a limited edition of 74 copies
plus 26 lettered copies signed by the author.
Dec. 31, 2019: The last remaining lettered copy (“C”) has been donated to the Silent Auction at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, January 27 – February 1, 2020.
$10.00 plus
$1.50 shipping
cash or check to:
Dry Crik Press
P.O. Box 44320
Lemon Cove, CA 93244
Posted in Photographs
Despite local forecasts for rain, we made the trek up the hill with our neighbors to brand our first bunch of calves for the season. Over the years here, we’ve dealt with fog, rain and snow, but yesterday the sun broke through the gray to complete a beautiful day.
Additional hazards are these two Blue Oaks that Effie Hilliard incorporated when she built these corrals many decades ago, one of which is now a casualty of our 4-year drought. Though we’ve threatened to remove them, consensus has been that they remain.
Though we see one another individually throughout the year, the first branding of the year is always a special get-together for all of us.
One of the benefits of trading labor is that everyone knows how we want the job done, whether a horseback or on the ground. You just can’t hire any better help than our neighbors.
And one of the drawbacks, as we age, is that some of us have now outlived our horses. Finding a replacement gentle and trustworthy enough for old men is not easy, but Tony Rabb brought a young buckskin mare to the branding pen for the first time with impressive success. Robbin and I thank everyone for helping us get the job done.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged branding, Calves, neighbors, Paregien Ranch, photography
Busy finding myself
between unfinished jobs
I have forgotten,
words leap
to start a line
of another poem
I’ll never finish:
half-baked epiphanies,
humorous futilities
like litter left behind me
doesn’t get the job done,
but makes the work
a little more fun.
How I crave the feel
of an old soft rope
in my hand,
spoke-balance loop
like an open mouth
hungry for heels
in the branding pen.
Fifty years
I’ve marked calves
on this spot,
chicken-coop corrals:
bog in the gate
that Giz built:
hog wire stapled
over a 2 x 6 rectangle
I drug through the mud—
replaced and almost forgotten.
It’s hard to let go:
same horseback look
south down-canyon,
creek meandering a bowl
of fresh green feed,
safe and apart
from a hazy world
beyond the narrows—
the feel of my rope
among neighbors
roping calves around a fire—
reliving a dream
on a borrowed horse.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019
Tagged branding, Calves, Homer Cove, photography, poetry
Up early, awaiting
confirmation of the storm
slated to rain out plans
to brand calves
without complaining,
feeding hay
on slick roads
to thin cows
as grass grows
against the cold
Winter Solstice.
Nothing on the news
but red and blue politics,
mass shootings
and fog on 99,
ads for fast foods,
wonder drugs
and old age—
not one damn thing
I want. Nothing
I can change
but feed more hay
to hungry souls.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019
Tagged branding, Calves, cows, photography, poetry, politics, rain, weather
I lived in town for a moment,
a neighborhood around the Shrine—
Black on one side,
college kids, the other
in a subdivided,
old two-story
peeling paint
we called Big Pink.
Weekend mecca for loud
electric sounds, Janis
and the Revolution wailing—
the street would teem
with strobe-lit kids,
weed wafting sidewalk trees,
trying to ignore the War,
Kent State and the M-16
awaiting graduation.
Landmarks close,
I had no plans to map—
yet found myself asleep
retracing trails
to High Sierra meadows,
bell mare edging
a snowmelt lake,
pine smoke and
a leaky bucket sky at night.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019
Tagged 1970, Los Angeles, photography, poetry, USC, Vietnam War
There’s a dragon with matches that’s loose on the town
Takes a whole pail of water just to cool him down.
– Grateful Dead (“Fire on the Mountain”)
After rain,
willows aflame,
green on black:
photographs
of germinating
truth taking root
after fire—after
the smoke clears
and dust disappears
with seasons changing—
we begin again
with grass.
Nine out of twelve days rain—
ground first to turn green
where an errant spark
blackened hillsides
three months back.
If only most of man’s mistakes
could be as easily erased
by just adding water
to all the bad actors
and their political stage plays.
Robbin caught these little fellas with her cellphone while we were putting the bulls out on Tuesday between rains.
There are no dreams like this:
old man learning to go slow
without coming to a stop—
hand let run the smooth flesh
of a time and weather-worn
corral-board table top, sanded
and shellacked, splinters sealed
beneath to become functional.
Scars and crooked fingers trace
the deep grain without calloused
insulation, a new sensation saved
for thin skin that bruises easily.
There are no dreams like this
for whip and spur youth, wide loops
and inflated heroics—yahoo mugs
raised to the wild, to the heavens
howling late into black night
when once I was among them.
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