Highwater debris,
enough to measure peak flow
gauging stations miss.
We’ve begun naming creeks
that flood the dry draws,
pull nominees from our histories
while exchanging guffaws.
We have become the helpless
prisoners of the weather,
of flatland floods and saturated mud,
resisting cabin fever.
Roads and fences, trees to cut,
our work comes to a halt—
no need to fuss, cows don’t need us
with water, grass and salt.
Posted in Haiku 2023, Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged cabin fever, Dry Creek, flood water, haiku, helpless, humility, mud, photography, poetry, rain, runoff, water, weather
It’s not about you—
and not about to change
the weather or politics.
You are helpless,
at the mercy of the swirl
of elements colliding,
ricochets and explosions,
occasional clear views
of space and landscape
that keep you leaning forward
into the sun, your shadow cast
upon a fading track of small
accomplishment. After a rain
every tree frog sings
as if spring depended on it.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged helpless, rainbow, tree frogs, work
Now that I can see beyond the dust
and dead oaks crumbling, begging
for some purpose yet as cordwood—
now that I can breathe, inhale wet,
clear channels to broaden my senses,
taste and smell the green air stick
to my thirty flesh with these rains,
I can think about this distant planet
and its people we are lost among,
the overlap of corporate nations
profiting from wars—projects to busy
and worry a populace to pharmacies—
I feel no less helpless, no less
inconsequential than a fly
trapped in a barn of spider webs.
(click)
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