It’s quiet now, she’s come and gone
without a sound, spent the night
without a word as we slept
deeply by the fire. She kept it dark
without the stars, hid the pregnant moon
that shed the rain lightly through the clouds.
We don’t know her name, shy goddess—
but we will leave the light on
with pomegranate jelly at the door.
– – – – –
0.63″ plus bugs
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged clouds, Drought, moon, photography, poetry, pomegranate jelly, rain, rain gauge, stars, weather
We’re talking cattle
with a rising moon in June,
making plans for cows and calves—
the gather and sort to town,
where old friends shuffle
across the sale barn’s catwalk,
boot soles sliding, glad
to be moving among the living
when so many are not.
No one cares about our conversations,
the moon eavesdrops when it wants
just to measure our progress.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged cattle, moon, photography, poetry
The mountains 'round here look like a woman lying naked on a bed - Dave Alvin (“Out in California”) Little wonder, the earth is female— the moon, a golden amulet rising from her breast, her feet at rest with the slope of Sulphur peak as her long dark hair forever streams into the creek. Apart from men, native women gathered here beneath her supine silhouette made sacred by the moon to be a healing place each time she took a breath. She shares her dreams: comfort and lasting peace beyond the ever-escalating chaos and confusion that rattles impatient minds like a gourd full of seeds. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-dcola-009&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-009&hspart=dcola¶m1=1¶m2=cat%3Dweb%26sesid%3Dc0a144b9197534bca38d88e99fdadb2b%26ip%3D174.222.3.117%26b%3DChrome%26bv%3D88.0.4324.182%26os%3DOS-X-10.11-El-Capitan%26os_ver%3D10.11%26pa%3Dgencoll09%26sid%3Dd49c3e6373dbf6716978c523512bcd6d%26abid%3D%26abg%3D%26a%3Dgsp_imdownloaderb_20_02_ssg10%26sdk_ver%3D%26cd%3D%26cr%3D%26uid%3D%26uref%3D&p=Out+in+California+Dave+Alvin&type=gsp_imdownloaderb_20_02_ssg10#id=1&vid=29c273bede5b45160a875054fb5122a0&action=click
Busy days before a pineapple express arrives
with a forecast two-inch rain before Christmas,
we wait with a glass of wine for meat on the fire,
for the Wagyu bulls trucked from Idaho in the
super moonlight over Donner, down Highway 99
to be unloaded, we watch the ridgeline, see a coyote
laughing in precursor clouds, hear him giggle
across the creek and we are lifted with our eyes
to all the celestial possibilities we don’t want
explained. It is enough to be found and noticed
as the moon peeks through the oak trees, to be
together like children howling with what they see.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged moon, photography, poetry, rain, super moon
I received this advertisement from Progressive Rancher, one of the many free publications put out by drug and animal health corporations:
I was thinking about ordering 400 cow suits when I noticed the holes in the helmet for horns, a flaw to be sure for moon-grazing where oxygen can leak out, and then not all of our cows have horns and none grow the same. We could dehorn the cows and plug the holes with corks.
Closer inspection also reveals no air pack, no oxygen, just hoses recirculating cud breath and methane, perhaps a walking bomb for the military. But the real flaw, and I remember as a boy the woman who suggested to my father that we put pants on our cattle to cover their private parts, is that there are no zippers for defecation, urination, procreation or for nursing calves.
All of this is mute on the moon, of course, where there’s nothing to graze anyway, even if the helmet was configured to allow it. From the Amazon of another time, I’ll order mine from Mother Goose:
Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
Waning morning moon
falls into the leafy arms
of a live Live Oak.
Weekly Photo Challenge(1): “Transition”
We become the moon
when tides of blood flood the mind
to dance in the rain.
Weekly Photo Challenge: “Victory”
If we measured life
in moons misused and wasted,
how many left full?
And as the moon rises he sits by his fire
Thinking about women and glasses of beer
And closing his eyes as the dogies retire
He sings out a song which is soft but it’s clear
As if maybe someone could hear…
– James Taylor (“Sweet Baby James”)
(click)
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