Tag Archives: age

AFTER AWHILE

Posted on April 20, 2015 by John | 10 comments

                        You others, we the very old have a country.
                        A passport costs everything there is.
                              – William Stafford (“Waiting in Line”)

Circles mapped to save steps on sure ground,
well-worn routine from barn to mangers,
feed and irrigate with the right tools

to mend our presence along the way—few
loose pages nowadays, at the ready—gathers
to brand and wean replayed, filed by pasture.

I remember the old dogs refreshing scent posts
in the last of the light before they slept
into forever, and all the old horses in the dark

nosing buckets trying to bring the sun—
and my father’s careful words, after awhile,
you have to get used to not being first in line.

10 Comments

Posted in Poems 2015

Tagged "Waiting In Line", age, William Stafford

DAMP WIND

Posted on April 18, 2015 by John | 5 comments

When the wind blows up canyon,
first light gray,
I am the old red horse,
twenty-five, bucking in place.

We never loose it, that wanting
stirred and satisfied—
to be wild again
when everything is right.

We feel his feeble effort,
hooves barely off the ground,
our whoops and cheers
howling on a damp wind.

5 Comments

Posted in Poems 2015

Tagged age, red horse, wild, wind

LEAVING WITH STAFFORD

Posted on January 12, 2015 by John | 6 comments

http://www.williamstaffordarchives.org

I imagine that the young men
I went to school with have retired
by now, given up their desks
for free-wheeling possibilities

to coast downhill grades, collecting
their rewards and all the promises made
to themselves, over and over again.
I truly wish them all the best.

And I suspect the girls have become
wise grandmothers with practical advice,
keeping secrets in ceramic cookie jars
with noisy lids like I remember.

Leaving with Stafford, I retire
from a world too large to digest,
and go to that far place for the familiar
sign, those recognizable tracks

where wild makes sense of circumstance.
We are collecting short stories
like mushrooms in wicker baskets
before they fade and melt into the ground,

discussing how we’ll sauté them over fire
in butter and garlic to melt in our mouths
instead. Already we can feel their wild
flavor rage in our veins, like venison,

as we shed the old flesh, find keen eyes.
All the ghosts will rise beneath the stars
to gather at our fire, faces flickering
in the darkness to share the light.

6 Comments

Posted in Poems 2015

Tagged age, Fire, poetry, retire, venison, wild, wild mushrooms, wildlife, William Stafford

FINDING ORDINARY

Posted on January 11, 2015 by John | 4 comments

Old men in the branding pen
hope for grace

to find the feel of singing loop
slide between their fingers—

of hoof dance timed and shaped
to catch two feet, slack to dally horn

come tight, as if it were nothing
out of the ordinary.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

Tagged age, branding, Calves, feel, feeling, Greasy Creek, Old men, photographs, poetry

Out in California

Posted on January 16, 2014 by John | 3 comments

Sulphur & 17, 2014

It’s all new ground, this branding in the dry—even though Robbin rigged and ran a sprinkler from a spring-filled tank the day before to keep the dust down. Conditions were delightful. Still feeding everyday, but wearing down as we and our neighbors try to get a few calves marked as we go. It’s time, a month later than normal. Naturally, the calves are lighter, not the big and bloomy kind that draw compliments or test the ground crew.

Age and youth, the cowboy dream alive and realized in the same pen, at the same moment, under perhaps the worst circumstances of weather to date in California. Surviving the Drought of 1977 early in my career gave me confidence during the many dry years since, but these historical dry times will impact the future for man and beast for years to come. Busy with the basics, we have yet to imagine some of these far-reaching impacts.

But it’s reassuring to be in the company of neighbors, all of us in the same boat with the same decisions to make: whether to buy more hay or sell more cows—usually both that can’t last forever. Most our brandings roll ‘old-people slow’, just right for us and a few throwback kids that might want this kind of life. What they don’t know, of course, is that they invigorate and inspire us, help keep us going, make it all the more worthwhile.