Small promise in the dawn’s empty clouds, more spiritual than stormy or wet, forecast moisture shrinks the closer we get to one more year of praying through a drought— another season of small marvels and miracles where epiphanies and wonders rise from this thirsty earth before our eyes to ease each day’s concerns for survival. We are so blessed with these wild diversions from ample grass and fat cattle that we begin to think that dry is normal and greet the New Year with resolution.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021
Tagged Drought, epiphanies, marvels, miracles, New Year, resolution, wild diversions
If it is Apollo’s steeds chomping at silver bits
I hear behind the ridge, eager to tow the sun,
bring the light like any other day, the future
to this cold, dark canyon—the last of the old load
of days to be dropped off before the New Year—
I’m ready early, hacking my last goodbyes
on paper, screening blessings from the dust
and drought behind me, I trust, having measured-up
to something I can’t see, head bowed, dragging
my feet in yesterday. We must lean into our collars,
move the wheel into new country, scatter virtue
like vigorous seed and hope for a bumper crop.
Posted in Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged 2014, Drought, Dry Creek, New Year, poetry, rain, water, weather, wildflowers, wildlife
In the days when I was young, being older carried certain rewards like riding my bike, instead of the school bus, the two miles to town, having a shotgun or the freedom of a driver’s license – important hurdles to adulthood I anticipated clearing in my dreams, over and over, until they came true. Each New Year was like a birthday, getting closer to that magic 21!
Today, much of that anticipation wanes, its momentum coasting, yet the New Year still stands as a symbolic landmark in my life – and like a new leaf, it’s a chance for a fresh start. The covers of last year’s poetry are closed into a chapbook, and into a file, so I can begin anew, jettisoning the old stuff, looking forward to something better. Because the poetry is a parallel plane to living, this also means closing the covers on the clutter and the non-productive that has attached itself to me, or I to it, over the year(s). A time to trim down to help find my grace.
Cowmen over 60 are rare enough in 2011, but for any of us to find our grace, despite the friction in our joints, seems to be the ultimate challenge – to grin and go on like we could dance. So much of it is timing and gravity, the weight of those things we don’t need that keep us out of step with what’s happening. In retrospect, I can see the significance of each step and stumble, but now becoming so engrossed with what’s at my feet, I have to remind myself to look up to see where I’m going.
Robbin and I wish you all a New Year of Grace.
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