Tag Archives: photographs

HIS HERONS

 

Easter 2014

Easter 2014

 

After rain in spring, I see my father
standing among a half-dozen others
atop fresh mounds of dirt, hear him

praise the Great Blue Heron as the best
‘gopher-getter around’. As the creek
warms, he glides up canyon early,

spends his days wading shallows,
coasting home in the gloaming.
Punctual, you could set your watch

by his circles to work each day,
depending on season and crop.
When it all mattered too much,

he’d slip up the road to check
the feed and fences, the condition
of my cows grazing with his herons.

 

EMPTY PROMISES

 

March 10, 2014

March 10, 2014

 

Riding rafts of red above
clouds of dust,
we could breathe for a moment.

 

 

IMAGINATION

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How easily she could say,
‘it’s all in your mind—’
deny, dismiss what she knew

could be true, if we let it
when we were children
pretending to be grown up—

playing games
with our imaginations,
mornings drumming music

on eucalyptus roots
before the school bus stopped
our spontaneous chants.

With rusty tools and sticks,
horse drawn relics
and Model T wrecks

we took off for town—
took turns driving
wild steeds or hot rod cars

depending on time—just
as much as we wanted
to get there.

 

 

WPC(4) — “Serenity”

 

FIDDLENECK

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Looking back at tracks in the clouds,
you spring the gate closed—
trapped forever.

 

 

WPC(3) — “Serenity”

 

CLARKIA ENHANCED

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Unfolding into space, hills
from peaks to plains unending
time beyond and past

the horizons of this moment
resting among the eroded
where I am near-nothing,

these specks of rock
spread out before me
like petals opening—

my nakedness
laid bare
as part of the landscape.

 

 

WPC(2) — “Serenity”

 

BLACK TAILED KITE

 

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Fence of my youth still standing
where birds of prey rest,
repair for soaring.

 

 

WPC(1) — “Serenity”

 

SIERRA TIDY TIPS (Layia pentachaeta ssp. pentachaeta)

Sierra Tidy Tips, Greasy Creek, 4.6.11

 

Leaking into a dry winter,
spring’s wild nectar drips
with sweet abundance.

 

 

AFTER DARK

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A boy’s bed upon the ground,
I stared at stars and wondered
if I was worth keeping alive

as I slept, if I could trust
the darkness to hold me
safe until morning—

looking up through
all the bright holes
of a rusty bucket sky,

connecting dreams
with a greater light
beyond the night—

I drew lines in the sky,
played dot-to-dot
instead of counting sheep.

 

LEARNING TO FLY

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Of all the spontaneous art, none
more trustworthy, more enthralling
than the wild mirrors—of heart

and grace without guilt pulsing
to get free, rising with the ascension
of ducks from cattails, clear droplets

raining from webbed feet etched
to hang on white cloud walls
to draws us in—and then, like

windows out to where we might
want to be—like poetry, learning
to fly with words a little at a time.

 

LIKE OWLS

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of this dirt
we burrow deeper into our shells
waiting for a rain.