A galaxy apart from pastoral green,
clack and bell of cable cars,
from the granite bench
of Victoria Secret’s windowed underwear
as I exhale a cigarette
into a metropolitan herd
of expressionless humans
headed somewhere– white
knuckled drive into one-way streets
persistent Siri suggests wrongly.
I wonder what I’m doing here.
Posted in Photographs
From a generation that didn’t trust anyone over thirty, a reckless time during the Viet Nam War when few of us envisioned achieving thirty years, seventy is indeed an invigorating landmark, an open gate to new opportunities to make the most of life. I was pleasantly astounded when I received this audio file yesterday morning from our dear friends David Wilke and Denise Withnell, whom we will see in San Francisco to watch the Giants play the Dodgers at AT&T Park on Sunday as we celebrate Dave’s 70th as well.
A storm off the Hawaiian Islands has arrived in the Bay Area as it edges south with a half-inch predicted here for tomorrow. With grass high, calves growing, rain coming, we leave the ranch in good hands.
Posted in Audio Files, Photographs
Tagged David Wilke, Denise Withnell, photography, SF Giants
Trees and flowers
below clouds above the creek
never looked the same.
The eagles have displaced the crows
on the power pole, singly claimed
the overlook of rising feed saved back
for weaning calves, to fall from,
flap and glide close to the ground
squirrel towns submerged in green.
Short skirmish, the eagle fell with one
black wing outstretched beyond
its taloned grasp deep into the grass.
I think I understand wild politics,
its guiltless traits, its territories
and borders, our totems changing.
How humbled were we when
the golden birds chose us
to entertain at dawn and dusk,
but beak and claw I never saw,
just two sets of wings lifting off
in opposite directions. High
at the head of Ragle Canyon
in the granite outcrop, she waits
to be relieved to feed herself.
It’s Easter spring and the hills are green
as they should be, golden fiddleneck
and skiffs of popcorn flowers in between
and we go back to floating scraps
of wood down furrows, sixteen-penny nail,
a mast for leaves. You would retreat
to your throne and princess dreams
in the forks of the walnut tree beyond us all,
or we would drive a team to town
from the dusty seat of the steel-wheeled
manure spreader to visit friends, names
we both remember now after sixty years.
We were turned loose to entertain ourselves,
play with our imaginations before TV
and cell phone screens—more grateful now.
for my sister Ginni
Six bunnies in the driveway as the grandkids and I fed the horses yesterday morning, drab Cottontails, but appropriate symbolism that drew excited squeals, yet underscored with knowing looks about the validity of the Easter Bunny. It was a messy feeding, half the flakes never made the manger, each child covered with alfalfa leaf, but the horses didn’t seem to mind the little strangers. In the Kubota, we prolonged the chore by naming the birds we saw, a covey of quail, a dove pair, a lone killdeer and blackbirds grazing the short-cropped green in the horse pasture.
Hoping to expose them to more wildlife, we took the crew to the corrals in Greasy that we just finished constructing, a project that Earl McKee began a decade or more ago. Even though we kept two of the three board pens intact, the interface with pipe required removing some posts and boards and losing an occasional thirty-penny nail. Each kid got a coffee can and the hunt was on for nails worth two-bits a piece, a practice run for plastic eggs filled with sweet surprises that my daughter was hiding in the dark as I went to bed. HAPPY EASTER!
Blue moon over green
above grandchildren grazing
to tree frog refrains.
Sometimes we can’t see
skeletons of drought-dead trees
through canyons of rain.
I have had the luxury
of not remembering
every story about me,
the mundane details,
embellished and edited,
recounted rhythmically
as if told often to others.
I can dress the rain
goddesses in gossamer gowns,
pen them dancing bare-limbed
with the sycamores
across the creek beckoning
wildly—let myself be drawn
into the image of a poem.
So much is make-believe
looking back into the mirror,
so much forgotten purposely.
I am not ready to retire
to whittling the past
into wooden statuettes
with so much more to do.
It could be Climate Change
or a changing of the guard,
an East Coast winter without end—
a sky full of harbingers,
floating clips of recycled news
fishing for the self-righteous
with seasoned bits of drama.
In one hand we hold Chekhov’s
mirror on our modern world.
Or are the clouds obfuscation,
each changing shape
of our imagination: our addiction?
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2018
Tagged Anton Chekhov, climate change, photography, poetry
drycrikjournal 