Like scattered birds, they circle back
hovering, fragments of faces, bits
of song fluttering and floating before me,
moments searching for a place to roost
within memory. Some high and bold
on bare branches singing yet, singing
always, while others light behind
a rustling wall of leaves to build nests,
mate and incubate quietly within me.
Easter 2014
After rain in spring, I see my father
standing among a half-dozen others
atop fresh mounds of dirt, hear him
praise the Great Blue Heron as the best
‘gopher-getter around’. As the creek
warms, he glides up canyon early,
spends his days wading shallows,
coasting home in the gloaming.
Punctual, you could set your watch
by his circles to work each day,
depending on season and crop.
When it all mattered too much,
he’d slip up the road to check
the feed and fences, the condition
of my cows grazing with his herons.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015
Tagged birds, Calves, cows, Dry Creek, father, Great Blue Heron, photographs, poetry, water, weather, wildlife
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs
Tagged birds, Black Tailed Kite, Dry Creek, haiku, photographs, poetry, Serenity, weekly-photo-challenge, wildlife
Of all the spontaneous art, none
more trustworthy, more enthralling
than the wild mirrors—of heart
and grace without guilt pulsing
to get free, rising with the ascension
of ducks from cattails, clear droplets
raining from webbed feet etched
to hang on white cloud walls
to draws us in—and then, like
windows out to where we might
want to be—like poetry, learning
to fly with words a little at a time.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015
Tagged American Widgeon, art, birds, Dry Creek, ducks, photographs, poetry, rain, spontaneous art, water, wild, wildlife
of this dirt
we burrow deeper into our shells
waiting for a rain.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged birds, Burrowing Owls, Drought, Dry Creek, haiku, photographs, poetry, weather, wildlife
I find my friend hunting
on my way to cut wood
for a branding fire.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs
Tagged birds, branding, Burrowing Owl, Calves, Dry Creek, haiku, photographs, poetry, wildlife
Exploring with a gun alone, oak trees
spoke to me—Red Tails swooped
to the wounded and buzzards trailed
at a safe distance when I was ten—
half-wild, I thought, circumambulating
the endless draws and canyons that called
for company and conversation—shooting
squirrels and hunting rattlesnakes in rock piles.
They would have jailed my folks today.
The first butterfly I saw batted by a bobcat
played better than Walt Disney, better than
the Space Race, Cold War or Sputnik.
Old violence is not too old to beget new values.
– Robinson Jeffers (“The Bloody Sire”)
With ease, we have evolved to softer versions
of ourselves—no longer lean, Dust Bowl men
in coveralls waiting for work and a weather change,
sinew no longer strained to stretch the harvest
of endless furrows. Within earshot of lamenting
old men leaning on fences, I was part of a future
doomed with easy-living, and so I have been
by comparison, yet with little time for visiting
face-to-face, eye-to-eye. We have become immune
to the violence next door, alive in cyberspace, and
deaf to war—the clash of sword-on-shield or bigger
better guns barking how to cull the herd—with ease,
we have evolved to envy dumb animals and birds
in touch with the sky, yearning for ignorance
and bliss. And all the old values now lost to youth.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged "The Bloody Sire", birds, Drought, evolution, Hereford Bull, photographs, poetry, Robinson Jeffers, values, Violence, war, wildlife
One of the guys I ran into on the way up into the Greasy watershed was this Burrowing Owl. I haven’t seen one on the ranch for several years, in part because they keep moving their colonies. I’ve run into this a owl a couple of times at the intersection of Pogue Canyon and the Mankin Flat Fire Road in past months, even hunted him with a camera once with no success. Yesterday, I caught him early in the morning with the point and shoot. Funny, funny little fellows.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged birds, Burrowing Owl, Dry Creek, photographs, wildlife
A song, not mine,
stuttered in the flame.
– Wendell Berry (“From the Distance”)
I was awake and she was smiling,
eyes speaking through the darkness—
tears of relief in my own.
We have our visitors, hear the gravel
on the drive turn under wheel,
without warning. Or the dog barks.
Or upon the happenstance of a phrase
yet echoing, they arrive
around the fire we are warmed by.
Living beyond the life we contemplate,
they assure us with a sign, align
the flight of birds with words
gliding, or in a whir of wings
they clutch our hearts. Are we
but aging flesh measured by numbers
and graded like meat to be consumed
by the machine, or is there another
currency common among all men?
drycrikjournal 