Tag Archives: photographs

DAY’S WORK SONG

 

Pretty Face, Triteleia ixioides - April 11, 2014

Pretty Face, Triteleia ixioides – April 11, 2014

 

Steep east slope damp,
tall green grass slick,
pale Pretty Faces hold their grins
beneath Buckeyes and Live Oaks—

                    heavy thatch of fallen limbs
                    holds the old fence down,
                    shelters a rat’s nest.

Nature has been winning
since I was here last
with the chain saw,
packing posts afoot
and splicing rusty wire
to keep cattle straight—
pretending to be in charge.

I see my mark: old cuts
with decomposing rings.
                    Not near as near
                    as in my mind—
four years since the low snows,
ten more for this six-inch growth.

Steep east slope damp,
tall green grass slick,
pale Pretty Faces hold their grins
beneath Buckeyes and Live Oaks.

 

FEAST IN THE FIDDLENECK

 

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Beneath the blankets
of fuzzy bloom, arms and legs
serve dinner for two.

 

 

THAT’S HOME

 

Sulphur Peak - March 3, 2015

Sulphur Peak – March 3, 2015

 

For most who don’t know, my family purchased the Greasy Creek Ranch from Earl McKee, mentor, surrogate father and good friend for nearly fifty years, where Robbin and I run our cows and calves. Upon seeing the photo of the two bull calves that escaped a simple gather to the corrals for branding, he was moved to write the following poem:

 

                               My mind recalls this precious glade
                      Where these two youngsters lived and played,
                          And like years ago their ears would hear,
                         The trumpeting wails of their fathers near.

                                That trail close by, I long have trod,
                        On a favorite horse, these hands have shod,
                       We both know the song that the Robins sing,
                 And the sounds of the cattle, where the cowbells ring.

                       Where the blooming Chaparral smells so fair
                            And the scent of wild flowers fills the air.
                      Who wouldn’t come back to this peaceful place,
                             To see Sulphur Mountain’s Majestic face?

                                I too, wish I could return once more,
                           To what these two calves, were longing for,
                           God planned for this place to be left alone,
                      And like them, I will always say, “That’s Home”.

                                                E. A. M. — 3/13/2015

 

AFTERWARDS

 

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Two centuries of women
gone beyond
healing and grinding,
needing shade
away from men—

dead Live Oak place
to roost for years,
our pair of crows
make familiar
flutters of love
balanced on a branch,
know one another’s
every feather,
preen and quiver
with how it feels
into the gloaming
afterwards.

 

NOT YET SPRING, 2015

 

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Leftover cedar
logs from the house
twenty-five years ago
                                          paid for
frame a loamy mix
of decomposing granite and clay
            with horse manure
            stirred and piled
            fine as sand
            three years fluffed
            with the skid steer
and fill what could be
a feeder along the fence—
a sixty-foot trough
for bare root raspberries
blackberries
border of red onions
come summer
and it not yet spring.

Like finches building nests
we enlarge the garden
in two half-days,
tend to instincts
warm air brings
and flesh demands
like plowing fingers
in fresh-worked dirt.

We lift another glass
and see colored fruit
years from here
                                          paid-for.

 

 

WPC — “Wall”

 

LAYERS OF DIRT

 

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This ground recovers our presence
with leaves and weeds, most all
of our mistakes erode with flowers,
explode with colors leaving seed

as accomplishment sags like ridgelines
of old barns and brittle wire between
broken posts as we sink satisfied
into the soil rich with the work

of hands. Calloused hands, hands
a horseback that track our thoughts
when we were green and learning
to see and think the hard way.

As we breathe, all the chiseled chins
of the rough and gruff retreat
to live as monuments in rock piles
with the honesty of rattlesnakes—

an immortality stirred into the earth
that can’t be purchased, but is always
upon always like the layers of dirt
our future depends, rooted within.

 

PLACE

 

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Close to coffee and cigarette,
I could be anywhere—
my tiny light lost
in night’s black sea.

Come dawn, she takes shape
to locate me beneath her
supine silhouette of ridges
rising, breathing like always.

 

BULLSEYE

 

Sierra Shooting Star (Dodecatheon jeffreyi) – March 3, 2015

Sierra Shooting Star (Dodecatheon jeffreyi) – March 3, 2015

 

Somewhere it’s raining
lavender stars in my dreams
awaiting impact.

 

 

TIME CHANGE

 

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Early yet in an early spring,
growing patches, orange-gold,
claim open slopes like flames,

Fiddleneck between gray skeletons
of Blue Oaks pushing bud,
feathery translucent leaves

where the gods walk ridges,
wave hands to paint,
adding color to hillside green

we’ve not seen tall in years.
Out of dust and naked dirt,
new mosaics, lush with moments,

openings for everything put off
in drouth—real work we absorb,
take our sweet time to recognize.

 

 

WPC(2) — “Orange”

 

Pygmy Poppy Eschscholzia minutiflora

February 24, 2015

February 24, 2015

 

March 3, 2015

March 3, 2015

 

March 3, 2015

March 3, 2015

 

March 3, 2015

March 3, 2015

 

I first spotted these flowers in March 2012, misidentifying them as Hill Sun Cups, then, due to drought conditions, only saw them briefly again in 2014. At two locations across the creek and east of the house about 1/4 mile, they began blooming in late February of 2015.

According to the Calflora map, this is the northernmost sighting west of the Sierras. Not a rare species, if confines itself to Southern California and east of the Sierras. Always nice to find a wildflower established beyond its normal range.