Seed to grain
on a whim of the weather
watched constantly
from space
and here on planet Earth
swirling with tempests
beyond the hands
of politicians—
try as they might.
Rooted in dirt
we search the habits
of our wild totems
for miracles
and pray to God as well
for luck.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged dirt, earth, God, luck, photography, poetry, TOTEMS, water, weather
Three-day one-inch-rain,
warm wet dirt germinating
green hair on steep slopes.
(Click to enlarge)
Posted in Haiku 2022, Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged cotyledons, earth, germination, haiku, miracle, nature, photography, poetry, rain, seed, water
1. We feed on numbers, irrigate and harvest plans with shaved efficiencies, measure our well-being by more or less with what’s on paper so easily burned or suddenly erased— we forget who we are. 2. We share amounts of rain, compare numbers with the neighbors, too often disappointed with what we need most: just enough moisture to revive this ground— this flesh and our more common senses.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Tagged common senses, earth, flesh, rain, snow, Sulphur Peak, weather
This old ground is on the move and we have changed it with our dreams of improvement that humanity demands to level mountains, harness rivers, pump valleys to collapse with efficiency and startling success— then we foul our surgeries. Beyond the road and fences, these bare hillsides have begun to breathe since she spent the night, whispering upon dry leaves clinging to the last of life. I am awakened, as if she never left, wrapped in the soft applause of her arrival bringing the gentle miracle of moisture as this old ground comes back to life.
Some come quickly now, a phrase to trigger more coiled upon the ground while others hibernate for days, for weeks and months, as if they might be dead without the touch of rain— that hard and brittle mindset to survive like deep-rooted filaree with all its colors, with all its seed waiting for a kiss. I know no other way to pen prosody.
Posted in Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Tagged congruency, creative process, earth, evolution, filaree, inspiration, nature, wild, writing poetry
We had water enough for play in furrows
with scraps of wood, leaves for sails,
regattas on rivers pumped from underground.
All the magic that children take for granted
swirled to the hum of electricity, twenty-horse
pumps like Buddhas squat in orchard rows
my father farmed for wagonloads of fruit
ripe for the rail, packed by women’s hands
for the road on diesel trucks to distant places.
His silhouette crosses deep within vineyard rows,
early morning, late afternoon, hoe in hand—
his pirate’s cutlass, swashbuckling open-topped
overshoes—checking water, irrigating grapes
at seventy, or so I think at sixty-eight, knowing
now what drew him to the earth he farmed.
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
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