A promise from forgotten days of rain,
bold whites and blues and greens
flush the flesh clean as a hawk’s cry
in spring. When we were children
here, we walked within our dreams
of endless rivers crashing and cascading
from the Sierra snowpack into the Valley
ditches and furrows, row upon row
to fill the cornucopia of the world.
But we have pumped the ground dry.
Is this a harbinger of better times, or
have the gods returned to say goodbye?
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Tagged corporate ag, Drought, gods, rain, sustainability, water, wells
Orange Harvest Mural by Colleen Michell-Veyna—Exeter, CA
1.
The valley sinks with pumping
deeper and deeper
into investor’s pockets
before they take the write-off,
before they turn the ground
for a profit.
It’s a clean deal
with no hands dirty.
2.
We are the immigrants
from another time
growing closer to the soil,
dreaming still of rain, bumper crops
and markets high enough
to pay the bank off—
mom and pops
who stay the ground.
3.
The natives heard them coming,
saw the woodsmoke,
left rabbits on the doorstep
to keep the guns inside—
to not spook the game
that fed them before
the tule elk and
antelope were gone.
Thirty days ago we hoped
for a better spring,
for clouds to rain us
back to normal
as we looked down
Ridenhour Canyon
to Dry Creek Road—
to the orchards
of Lemon Cove.
Hills now brittle and brown,
last year’s dead oak skeletons
have company, naked
as the Kaweahs—tilted
granite rock without snow.
Corporate Ag without water
drills wells to hell—
spending billions
into the Pleistocene
to hasten the conclusion
of farming the San Joaquin.
We had hoped for a better spring,
another month of rain and green,
creeks and rivers overflowing,
flooding Valley towns.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged corporate ag, Drought, towns, Valley farming, weather, wells
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