Tag Archives: photography

FULL STURGEON MOON

Too bright to sleep
or wrestle with dreams
with a full Sturgeon hole
rising from the ridgeline
into the night sky

like a gigantic galactic leak
upon us, for all the UFOs
and UAPs to pass through,
for all the excuses we need
to behave like lunatics.

MY RIVER

runs over boulders,
spills and spumes
into deep green pools

or into cutbanks
exposing roots
hiding rainbow trout

beneath a dogwood’s
white blooming
I can’t let go.

Overgrown, no room
for a kid to cast
a deer hair fly—

fresh flow of time
behind me now
I go there yet

without thinking,
without yearning,
with nothing more

than feeling
the untamed current
still run through me.

Sea Chest Oyster Bar

Whether poetry or prose, it’s been difficult to post to the blog under the current political atmosphere of chaos and confusion that has become addicting for those of us who are still hoping to ferret out the truth. Though adding to the whole mess with more political poems is difficult to resist, with few facts, they are seldom enlightening. Like so many other people, we’ve not only sought ways to wean ourselves from the “latest”, but celebrate the positive with the many uplifting alternatives that surround us, reminders of the joy and grace that plays out before our eyes if we keep them open.

We shipped our last load of calves in the middle of May, and since selected our replacement heifers that will get their Brucellosis vaccinations on Wednesday. We will start supplementing them and our 1st and 2nd calf heifers soon thereafter as we prepare them to calve in September. Our carrot has been the 50th Anniversary of the Sea Chest Oyster Bar in Cambria (70 degrees). A month long celebration, we were in attendance for a couple of enjoyable nights.

Back home to 100+ degrees:

The distant hawk’s bare branch at dawn
awaits fuzzy-headed movement
to fall like an arrow fledged with patience.

The sun crawls across the flats
without a sound, wild oats bent
like blond hair combed into the light.

Shadows stretch beneath hillside oaks
into the puddled creek where an egret
goes fishing before breakfast.

California Thistle

Lesley Fry found this thistle (Cirsium occidentale var. californicum) on our Paregien Ranch to add to our wildflower collection.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

Summer heat intense enough
to forget the rainy days beyond
the blinding sheets of delirium

framed in flames. The trickle
of the creek shrinks each day
as young cows bring calves down

to shade and well-water
before we gather to wean—
first-calvers looking for relief,

yearning for those days of virginity,
of curious discovery free
from bovine responsibilities.

Never in this world the same,
yet no better mother than a cow—
Happy Mother’s Day!

NUMBERS

Don’t add another number
to my name or address,
to my Real ID, cell

or plastic magic,
Medicare and
(and thank you, Merle)

so-called Social Security.
With so many numbers
how can I be sure it’s me?



BLACKBIRDS

A blackbird perched on a rusted railing with a rustic background.

Like fighter jets after hawks,
they nose dive the dog,
attack from redwood boughs
to protect a fledgling
too soon on the ground.

A community, a murder, a grind,
a merle or murmuration
of blackbirds has moved-in,
displaced the finches’
crimson dance upon the rail

with cocky walks and orgies
of foreplay and flittering sex
anywhere they please—but ready
to herd a rattlesnake
out of the garden and barnyard.

FIREBREAKS

Blading the season’s last green grass
for firebreaks, I need to concentrate
far away from the world’s turmoil,

peel the weeds out of the soil
or sever their roots, over and over
the same ground until smooth—

an impatient perfectionist,
carving a twelve foot road
the cattle will travel and dimple

like a golf ball, but will stop fire
if not too windy to ignite
wild oats and tall dry feed

easier than I can throttle back
the flow of pompous rhetoric
that has ignited global animosity.

MARCH HAIKU

On top of the world
the fat calves are curious—
nothing else to do.

MINING THE MOON

What has happened to the world,
the people, the planet,
now that we can measure

parts per billion,
the distance in light years
to the nearest black hole.

Crowded in corrals,
we are bent beneath the weight
of useless information

shouldering our way
to the EXIT gate
to shed the burdens

of mind and flesh—
lifetimes spent
trying to escape?

What has happened to the world,
this magic planet,
its Mother Goose,

her golden eggs
the rogues are after
mining the moon?