Dependable, Sulphur Peak
faces each day
dressing for the season.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged haiku, photographs, poetry, Sulphur Peak, weekly-photo-challenge
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Clara B. Stafford, Effie Hilliard, haiku, photographs, poetry, weekly-photo-challenge
Posted in Photographs
Tagged Butterfly Mariposa Lily, Drought, photographs, White Mariposa Tulip, wildflowers
With drought conditions, the rare and endangered Kaweah Brodiaea bloom is early and rather difficult to find this year. Go HERE for the history of the Kaweah Brodiaea on this ranch or follow the tags below.
In dry times, the gods retreat
to the granite, forsake the clay
and its inhabitants to fashion
spring upon the open slopes
with skiffs of blooming dots
à la Monet—above the dust
rising between green fading
and leaves curling red, it’s not
quite heaven, but enough.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Claude Monet, Drought, flower-friday, photographs, poetry, wildflowers
Islands of bare, red clay
on shallow green receding—
seeds that never swelled
to root ceramic slopes
or went with clouds
from cloven hooves—
stare back sternly.
She is dry,
nothing left to offer
the eye—only
the lone calf
grazing shores
for the overlooked
knows no better
world than this.
With rain, even lichen
and moss vie for space—
breathe life into a rock.
Hide of a Herford calf
at a distance—red
lichen living on rock.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged haiku, photographs, poetry, weekly-photo-challenge
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged haiku, photographs, poetry, sycamore, weekly-photo-challenge
“We may be living on an atom
in somebody’s wallpaper.”
– Wendell Berry (“Dust”)
1.
Between worlds, the sun leaked through
the shingles of Granddad’s dark shed
where the pixie dust would dance, sparkle
within light beams, as my sister and I
urged invisible steeds to town adventures—
fly aboard the manure spreader stored
for the future, the iron wheels and idle
wagon tongue would wait to take us
to wild dimensions for young dreams.
2.
The friction wears us smooth and fine,
cobbles, sand and dust. In the dry years
midden rises under hoof on a gust,
generations lifted to cloud the light
that smell like deer hides and taste
like acorns—tiny planets inhaled
behind cattle drawn to gather here
to wait and see how serious we are
about leaving what feels like peace.
3.
Through a stained glass window high
above the hand-hewn beams in the adobe
Chapel atop the prep school’s hill,
the call of selflessness floated on motes
that framed the sermon, moving me
from the wooden pews filled with two
hundred other vacant blue blazers
into another world for a week or so, yet
clings still to particles that float in space.