Supermoon, June 23, 2013
What gift of light
have I to offer
dark mornings,
the coyote’s howl,
of stars reflecting suns
above the ridgeline
of her body sleeping,
breathing beside us
in this canyon apart
from the news
of mortal men
and women staged
to sell consumption
and wealth
to the enslaved—
before I fail
to be so generous
in the daylight?
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, Supermoon
Hollow pipe songs at first light
pierce the darkness, own the dawn
with answered calls from oak trees
and granite piles of fractured rock
balanced on the edge of time
frozen around me. Early morning
solos grow into a chorus of chants
on the other side of the door,
a primitive awakening to greet me,
to ignore my circle of chores.
We’ve become part of the landscape
they return to, generations born
near cattle, horses and water troughs.
After these dry years, a colony—
a reunion of Roadrunners nesting.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged birds, Blue Oak, Drought, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, roadrunner, water, weather, wildlife
Ithuriel’s Spear Triteleia laxa – March 18, 2015
When the angel’s touch
spills with long-stemmed purple blooms,
no room for deceit.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs, Poems 2015
Tagged Dry Creek, flower-friday, haiku, Ithuriel's Spear, photographs, poetry, Triteleia laxa, wildflowers
Ithuriel’s Spear Triteleia laxa – March 18, 2015
We jump into spring
without looking or thinking,
craving wild nectar.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, haiku, Ithuriel's Spear, photographs, poetry, Triteleia laxa, wildflowers
Now in the quiet I stand
and look at her a long time, glad
to have recovered what is lost
in the exchange of something for money.
– Wendell Berry (“The Sorrel Filly”)
Looming closer, a swirling darkness just beyond
the thought of summer’s water that is not
frozen deep in the Sierras to feed our rivers
and canyon leaks—of brittle fall and cattle
gathered at an empty trough. The creek dries back
and sinks in March, lifted to new canopies
of sycamores dressing. Skeletons of old oaks
stand out between greening survivors, some
wearing only clumps of yellow mistletoe
hanging like reasons, raisons—like raisins
clinging to a leafless vine. Each season
spins the same dry song, yet we find our place,
harmonize and sing along, lifted like precious
moisture to tender leaves, a basic ascension not
available in the big box stores, unrecorded
in the history of our presence. This may be
the new normal for old people—that daze
of amazement we have been working towards.
Posted in Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged "The Sorrel Filly", Blue Oak, cattle, Drought, Dry Creek, Kaweah, Kaweah River, poetry, rain, San Joaquin Valley, water, weather, Wendell Berry
Leftover cedar
logs from the house
twenty-five years ago
paid for
frame a loamy mix
of decomposing granite and clay
with horse manure
stirred and piled
fine as sand
three years fluffed
with the skid steer
and fill what could be
a feeder along the fence—
a sixty-foot trough
for bare root raspberries
blackberries
border of red onions
come summer
and it not yet spring.
Like finches building nests
we enlarge the garden
in two half-days,
tend to instincts
warm air brings
and flesh demands
like plowing fingers
in fresh-worked dirt.
We lift another glass
and see colored fruit
years from here
paid-for.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged birds, blackberry, Dry Creek, garden, photographs, poetry, raspberry, red onions, weather, weekly-photo-challenge
This ground recovers our presence
with leaves and weeds, most all
of our mistakes erode with flowers,
explode with colors leaving seed
as accomplishment sags like ridgelines
of old barns and brittle wire between
broken posts as we sink satisfied
into the soil rich with the work
of hands. Calloused hands, hands
a horseback that track our thoughts
when we were green and learning
to see and think the hard way.
As we breathe, all the chiseled chins
of the rough and gruff retreat
to live as monuments in rock piles
with the honesty of rattlesnakes—
an immortality stirred into the earth
that can’t be purchased, but is always
upon always like the layers of dirt
our future depends, rooted within.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015
Tagged Blue Oak, dirt, Dry Creek, earth, grass, immortality, photographs, poetry, rain, weather, wildflowers, wildlife
Two months from Elko
busy branding calves,
begging for rain and grass,
we listen under an empty
overcast to “A Matter
of Believin’” as if Gail
were here with 100 years
of ranching lessons
in poetry and song.
South slopes all but done,
thin feed gray on clay
showing again,
it’s time to love
this short spring
wrapped in wildflowers
with our old friend
and glass of wine—
the whole show
mostly behind us now,
we indulge ourselves,
embrace the storms
of good fortune
we have worn well—
believing and trusting,
adapting like cattle
to these same hills
just harvesting grass.
Posted in Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged "A Matter of Believin'", cows, Drought, Dry Creek, Gail Steiger, poetry, rain, weather, Wendell Berry, wildflowers
Close to coffee and cigarette,
I could be anywhere—
my tiny light lost
in night’s black sea.
Come dawn, she takes shape
to locate me beneath her
supine silhouette of ridges
rising, breathing like always.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015
Tagged coffee and cigarette, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, weather
Sierra Shooting Star (Dodecatheon jeffreyi) – March 3, 2015
Somewhere it’s raining
lavender stars in my dreams
awaiting impact.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs, Poems 2015
Tagged Dodecatheon jeffreyi, Dry Creek, haiku, photographs, poetry, Sierra Shooting Star, wildflowers
