Blading the season’s last green grass
for firebreaks, I need to concentrate
far away from the world’s turmoil,
peel the weeds out of the soil
or sever their roots, over and over
the same ground until smooth—
an impatient perfectionist,
carving a twelve foot road
the cattle will travel and dimple
like a golf ball, but will stop fire
if not too windy to ignite
wild oats and tall dry feed
easier than I can throttle back
the flow of pompous rhetoric
that has ignited global animosity.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged firebreaks, photography, poetry, politics
Dicentra chrysantha, Woolley Canyon April 12, 2025
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal, Wildlfowers
Tagged Golden Eardrops, photographs
A wonderful day for Robbin and me touring Woolley Canyon with Chuck and Lesley Fry where Virginia and Ken Mckee run their cows and calves. Though wild and rough (it takes a week to gather), it’s the most diverse piece of ground, ranging upwards to 3,600 feet, I’ve ever seen. Lots of wildflowers new to me:
Indian Pink (Silene californica)
Indian Warrior (Pedicularis densiflora)
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal, Wildlfowers
Tagged Indian Pink, Indian Warrior, wildflowers, Woolley Canyon
Out here in the California heartland
beyond the peeling billboards
that once announced
every fruit and vegetable
capital of the world
removed from Highway 99,
swapping crops
for air conditioned shopping malls –
neutered Valley towns
given-up their figs
to farm people instead,
I can’t tell Turlock from Modesto.
Out here between the furrows where
every Mom and Pop grocery store,
fruit stand, bar, bait and tackle shop
under one flat roof is boarded-up,
old gas pumps frozen
like soldiers from the Fifties
waiting for a windshield
or dip-stick to check
or if the kids are over
the mumps or chicken pox yet.
And Congressman,
I know we can’t go back –
that the rest of you must
have great big plans
we can’t comprehend,
that you all have your own dream
of what you can do with the harvest:
your ledger of plastic magic debts –
but what happens
when the tree grows
too far from its roots?
We are the tendrils
burrowing in the dirt where
what little water left
is pumped into food
we can’t sell at a profit
anymore
and I was wondering
how do we fit your vision
of the new millennium?
How are you going to keep us
producing
like numb milk cows to stanchions
without kicking down
with a little more cash
or bigger rations?
Or have you dealt us out
for some fresh field workers
not yet addicted to
electricity or TV,
never driven a tractor or new car
or had to pay
license and insurance yet
with nothing to lose
but their innocence?
Dear Congressman,
I couldn’t sleep again tonight
trying to figure how it’s going to work
and thought I’d write and ask you
before
I invest another decade in the soil:
how in the hell can we stay
to pay the bills and still
subsidize your consumption?
You don’t need my vote
and not enough will hear
whatever good or bad I might say
about you to matter,
but I thought I’d ask
one human to another:
do you really have a plan?
Not much has changed. Written in 1998 and included in “Poems from Dry Creek” (Starhaven)
Epaulets on his shoulders,
I remember the cocky strut
of the redwing blackbird
beneath the grain bucket
mornings when we saddled horses,
back when we had a pond,
wild ducks and nested cattails,
but not enough water
to watch it evaporate—
and I miss them, miss the
mallards come the gloaming
on whistling feathers
with bellyflop landings
to safely spend the night.
It’s all about water.
Posted in Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged cattails, poetry, pond, redwing blackbird, water
On top of the world
the fat calves are curious—
nothing else to do.
Posted in Haiku 2025, Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry
Tagged Calves, haiku, photography, poetry
What has happened to the world,
the people, the planet,
now that we can measure
parts per billion,
the distance in light years
to the nearest black hole.
Crowded in corrals,
we are bent beneath the weight
of useless information
shouldering our way
to the EXIT gate
to shed the burdens
of mind and flesh—
lifetimes spent
trying to escape?
What has happened to the world,
this magic planet,
its Mother Goose,
her golden eggs
the rogues are after
mining the moon?
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry
Tagged golden eggs, moon, Mother Goose, photography, poetry
When the rains come right
and knee-deep green feed hides
beneath Fiddleneck in the flats,
we forget the bare, baked slopes
cut by dusty cow trails plunging
to the murmur of the diesel truck
spilling alfalfa flakes the length
of undressed pastures—lost bawling
calves and slow thin cows.
So blessed to have disremembered
the lean dry times, we believe
the miracle is normal, that Hera
and her daughters will set-up camp
and stay a fruitful future for man
and beast, creeks in the canyons—
a tangible fantasy for the thriving
when the rains come right
to change our way of thinking.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, miracles, photography, poetry, rain, spring, weather
Early spring garnish
before a mid-March rain,
wild colors claiming
lush shades of green
that cattle finish grazing
by eight o’clock.
Everybody feels
what’s coming,
despite the sunshine—
despite the rattling
of sabers
from would-be kings.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged rain, storms, wildflowers, would-be kings
Dad claimed it was the politicians
far away from farming
that saved day’s end for golf,
adding another hour in the field
to get the harvest in
as summer days grew longer.
Just like a bank,
sunlight loaned for how to spend it,
work or play?
Now no matter which
we still change hands
on his vintage clock.
drycrikjournal 