With evening G & Ts
we will stare
across the creek
at black hills,
white ash remains
cut by cowtrails—
pink phos-chek trim
between blond dry feed
until it rains
gray,
until it rains
green.
We map the burn,
watch the weather,
hope for ground soft-enough
to drive steel posts
for five barbed strands
of Red Brand
because good fences
make better neighbors
for a long time.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019, Ranch Journal
Tagged "Creek Fire", fences, photography, poetry
No wet redwood reflection, I look past black morning,
scan the radar for a chance the last forecast stalled
before it got away to who-cares-where into the future
on the other side of the Sierras, then search for stars beyond
the gray for an out-of-habit game plan between rains:
soft warm earth too wet to work too far from home.
Forty years ago I slowed, took the Fowler exit off
Highway 99 for Madam Sophia’s neon sign of things
to come my way from the landscape of my palm:
low range of callouses spilling into the deep canyon
of my heart—she read both hands and lit a candle,
saw lots of water in my future and I was glad.
Dawn is gray above the green and last year’s bleached
dry feed, chorus line of sycamores undress white limbs,
show flesh between their rosy leaves to tease a good
hard rain to bring the creek to sweep its cobbled bed
of four-years’ deadfall in a rush to wipe out water gaps:
fixing fences into a future that’s not quite guaranteed.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, fences, Madam Sophia, photography, poetry, rain, water, weather
Fence posts and barbed wire:
obstacles for honest people,
may their tribe increase.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, fences, grass, grazing, weekly-photo-challenge
Of all the necessary evils strung
across the West, mile after mile
glistening either side of every highway,
every rail, keeping cattle in and people
out: lines of wire and sentry posts
standing between a disastrous mix
of urgencies, a clash of cultures:
the timeless calm of open space
invaded and escaped at seventy.
The better ground fenced between
Frost’s good neighbors, cross-hatched
into managed pastures cowmen dream
will optimize the grass, the grazing—
and of course the breeding: a tangled
trail of testosterone enraged to war,
a crash of skulls, two tons of bellowing
bulls colliding in a storm unwinding
borders for as far as they can.
Most cowboys despise fixing fence—
ride around the long step down
to keep the evil stuff up.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015
Tagged Barbed Wire, bulls, cowboys, cowmen, fences, fixing fence, necessary evils, Paregien Ranch, photographs, poetry, testosterone, weekly-photo-challenge
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