SEPTEMBER

Posted on September 3, 2017 by | 2 comments

 

First Angus calves – September 1, 2017


 

With the worst of summer heat behind us, our new year begins on September 1st, when our cows start calving. Since May 21st, we’ve had 83 days over a hundred degrees on Dry Creek, fiery streaks in memory. The ash and smoke from the Pier Fire in the Tule River drainage above Springville has wrapped us in filtered sunlight this past week, changing the color of nearly everything, but it’s a welcome relief to see the silhouettes of cows and fresh calves in the shade of oak trees, the new beginning we’ve been waiting for.

 

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Country Living

Posted on September 1, 2017 by | 5 comments

 

 

The romantic notion of country living often needs some seasoning of reality.

Tell Blanke, an incoming freshman at Cal Poly SLO majoring in engineering, noticed this rattlesnake crawling out of the rocks beneath the house where he and his mother Terri live along the Kaweah River in Three Rivers. By the time he got to the river’s edge the snake had crawled through his Aunt Tammy’s yard and was headed towards his grandparents’ house where he dispatched him. The Britten ‘compound’, as Robbin refers to this generational cluster of houses on the river, enjoys a sandy beach and excellent swimming hole most all summer.

For perspective’s sake, Tell is about 6’ 3” and still a bit shaky when Terri snapped this photograph yesterday with her iPhone. Our neighbor up the road has killed seven rattlesnakes from beneath their deck. Fortunately, Robbin and I haven’t killed any, but we’ve been keeping our eyes peeled.

 

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IN BLACK AND WHITE

Posted on August 30, 2017 by | 1 comment

 

 

Tell me everything is normal,
that I have slowed as time
has accelerated change—

that there are people, out there,
trying to steal you away
with worry and fear,

trying to bait you
with their protection
like a coyote in a cage.

Tell me everything is normal,
that anything you say
can become criminal,

that all the double-entendres,
similes and metaphors,
all the poetic devices

may be held against you
someday. It was serious
in the fourth grade:

a love note to Denise
promising marriage
and devotion falling

into my parents’ hands—
a mortifying lecture
to be careful what I write.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2017

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Cooper’s Hawk

Posted on August 29, 2017 by | 2 comments

 

 

The arrival of the Cooper’s Hawk several weeks ago has thinned the coveys of quail around the house, required scouts and sentinels as they’ve quickened their step. Likewise, he’s had to change his roost as they’ve learned where to look. Startled at my desk to a flutter beyond the door, he was perched on the railing, waiting for the quail to come off the hill to water. Six feet away, this photograph is softened dramatically by both window and window screen.

I missed the shot, however, when he tried to fly through the windowed door, wings outstretched and talons hung in the screen door. It surprised and scared me enough to be spellbound, another moment where I have to be satisfied to brand it in my mind.

 

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MOMENTS

Posted on August 27, 2017 by | 6 comments

 

Mt. Tamalpais – L.E. Rea (1868-1927)

 

For a moment in the movie I was moved—
removed from the chaotic struggle for power,
the clumsy bad actors, the sick intrigue.

For a moment, the song sang for me,
free from the fetters of this flesh to float
on eagles’ wings above the discord of humanity.

For a moment, the photograph forgave me,
took me in and gave me eyes to see
the simple splendor of reality.

For a moment, I was the poem: it wrote me
beneath sharp peaks of granite scree
sunk deep into a blue, blue sky reflected

on Sierra snowmelt, white clouds passing.
What for the art have we to offer for release
but moments marked where we found peace.

 

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BRINGING SOME HOME

Posted on August 25, 2017 by | 3 comments

 

 

Where the creek stops in moss-laden pools
miles above the Kaweah in August, wild hens
collect with half-grown poults scratching for seeds

and bugs—aware, but not caring. I whistle
for a gobble as they drift off into the brush
as I have, into the canyons of lichened rock,

the Live Oak and Chamise. I am native
here, apart from where I came to forget
the blunderbuss of duplicity.

I came to be refreshed by the unafraid,
by the innocent and self-reliant—
I came to bring some home with me.

 

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HOME ON THE RANGE

Posted on August 23, 2017 by | 3 comments

 

 

Mind gone blank: Zen empty
across the creek gone dry,
shadows stretching over long blond feed,

first-calf heifers coming out from under
shade to water for an evening’s graze.
It’s all the mind I need.

The news rains off my shoulders.
Even the eclipse didn’t faze me,
but for the fuzziness in my gut.

For a moment, it worried me—
so disconnected to the periphery
I had no need for poetry—

no need for anything but to breathe,
to inhale and cleanse the flesh
as it melts into the gloaming.

 

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ENFLAMED

Posted on August 18, 2017 by | 3 comments

 

 

Fires in the night flicker on different faces,
candlelit or shadows borne from torches,
glowing herds driven by separate forces:

Black & white
Love & hate
Wood & steel

of celestial guitars—how loathing
corrupts the innocent and trusting,
all the possibilities of anything more.

 

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TROUT FISHING

Posted on August 12, 2017 by | 2 comments

 

Robbin, July 2011

 

The answer in art appeals,
resides within, not without.
It adds, it multiplies

boundlessly: fresh, unnamed
senses like ripples from a pebble
spreading across pools

we harbor in our hearts
apart from politics,
from the legions of agendas

to satisfy the appetites
of power and greed
where might is right.

Art is not correct
and never stays the same,
illusive as the canyon wren’s

cascading song—I hear it now
again for the first time:
bear clover forever stirred

in memory miles away
in time and distance
trout fishing as a boy.

 

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IDES OF AUGUST 2017

Posted on August 11, 2017 by | 2 comments

 

 

In the churning air we breathe
the latest news cascades from mountaintops,
waterfalls of misty details stream instantly

around us, tugging eddies we ignore
like bad dreams—waking to
and shaking off nightmares of fear

we carry on, we persevere.
How I envy cattle and coyotes
their ignorance, poor dumb beasts

with habits honed day by day,
moon to moon. Greeted by heifers,
nearly yearlings coming into season,

I can feel their flesh crawl with heat
beneath tight black hides that shine—
each day yet a new confusion.

It will suffice to linger among them
reading poetry under my breath
until they bore with my poor intellect.

 

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