Tag Archives: photography

BECKONING

 

Yesteryear calls out of the blue

in these piebald canyons turning brown

yawning across a shrinking creek

 

to leave a confidential message—

not in words, but deeds.  Faces,

always faces.  Big George Hubble

 

in grade school who loaned me a dime

for a lemon bar popsicle

I never paid back. Some call

 

from out of the ground

that I never knew had gone on

to find their relief.

 

Some faces leave no names,

or none I can remember,

to console me as I did them

 

during the paisley days of a jungle war

I missed for a football knee

trying to be a hero.

 

 

LANDMARKS

Wuknaw, Yokuts Creation Place

 

As children in the mountains

we learned to walk in the dark

on the uneven ground we knew

sometimes shadowed by starlight

or an occasional moon.

 

It was a wonder watching it rise

behind the far pines

as we lay on our backs

supposing excitedly about something

long since resolved,

 

but such a luxury to feel the hair

on familiar cedars, puzzle

over the sap of sugar pines,

fish the river for adventure

in the old days.

 

Time has simplified my map

to safe and basic trails

with many landmarks,

each with a story

to remind me where I am.

 

AWAKENING

 

The hollow sounds before daylight,

hillside Roadrunners awakening in the black,

their plaintive solos, reverberating notes

 

awaiting an answer, a location, a place

to be filled in the future, a pile of twigs

within the spines of cactus

 

beneath this soft comforter of clouds,

days trailing a meager rain to shield us

and the dew upon the grass.

 

The day is yet empty, moments awaiting

purpose and order. In my mind, I see

the tools I’ll need to be useful.

 

 

Image

Crack of Dawn

ONE MOMENT, PLEASE!

In these hills, a man finds space that feels
familiar and friendly, and it must ask
in ways where we hang empty words
like ribbon just to find our way back - but
we stay a moment and let our horses blow.
 
They feel it - perhaps they feel it first
and do the asking of the place, or perhaps
it is the shards of light diffused at dawn
upon the many-legged oaks standing
knee-deep in grasses on the near ridge
 
that shield us from man’s square creations,
his cubic thinking. Perhaps the sensual grace
of limb or slope, or granite worn to look
inside our minds, but there are places
that ask nothing else of us but to breathe
 
and taste the air, inhale with our eyes
and drink with our flesh for just a moment.
Once dared, it becomes ever-easier to be
enveloped with the wild, an addictive peace
that embraces awe as eagerly as a child
 
might love - where a man can ride beyond
his time and station, beyond the tracks of those
before him: spaces that beg a moment’s notice
where both grand and simple revelations
are left and learned and lived in place.


 

REPARATION

 

 

Shaking hands with my former self
in these chaotic times
may not be progress. The clock

ticks backwards to dust clouds
and loud hurrahs, to whoops of youth
and muscles flexed to hold

the heroic buck and run
of someone else’s dreams—
a reckless swagger into smaller light.

I could have died several times
and learned nothing—my grip
to meet myself eye-to-eye.

 

First Wagyu X Calf 2020

 

Age & Source Verification: Cow 6151, September 14, 2020

The Source & Age Verification program is a USDA approved, non-biased, third-party audit that verifies the source and age of your calves. The source verification will enable you to meet COOL requirements, the age verification will make your cattle eligible for export to countries with age requirements on imported beef products.

 

TALISMAN

 

 

From out of the smoke
raining with ash, white egret
at standing water.

 

First English Calf 2020

 

Age & Source Verification: Cow 3005, September 8, 2020

The Source & Age Verification program is a USDA approved, non-biased, third-party audit that verifies the source and age of your calves. The source verification will enable you to meet COOL requirements, the age verification will make your cattle eligible for export to countries with age requirements on imported beef products.

 

HEIFERS AND HORSES

 

 

No social distancing, evening conversation
centers on introductions as sorrel horses
welcome first-calf heifers coming to water:

no politics, no economic woes, just
domesticated souls touching nose-to-nose
before shadows crawl across the canyon.

We are enveloped for prolonged minutes
within their quiet reverie, forgetting
all the bad news they’ll never know.