Tag Archives: photography

Four Little Pigs

 

 

Robbin caught these little fellas with her cellphone while we were putting the bulls out on Tuesday between rains.

 

INTO BLACK NIGHT

 

 

There are no dreams like this:
old man learning to go slow
without coming to a stop—

                    hand let run the smooth flesh
                    of a time and weather-worn
                    corral-board table top, sanded
                    and shellacked, splinters sealed
                    beneath to become functional.

                    Scars and crooked fingers trace
                    the deep grain without calloused
                    insulation, a new sensation saved
                    for thin skin that bruises easily.

There are no dreams like this
for whip and spur youth, wide loops
and inflated heroics—yahoo mugs
raised to the wild, to the heavens
howling late into black night
when once I was among them.

 

THE ROCK

 

 

The truth is at your feet,
the wet or dry of dirt
beyond concrete and asphalt—
the rock’s slow erosion,
the past that holds you up
and feeds your flesh
before it owns you
with all the tiny worlds
busy sustaining themselves
and one another.

Words skirt around the facts
and eventually evaporate
into a meaningless vapor
we exhale, distilled slogans
casually consumed
as shortcuts to nirvana—
the rhymed and tuned
hackneyed mantras
with which we work
beneath our breath.

Look to the ridgeline
that cuts the sky
that holds the storms
we can’t deny—
to the heavens
where gods and goddesses
decide what’s best—
no better place
to rest your mind
with open eyes.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

Over an inch of rain, fire in the wood stove, soup on the stove, calves on the ground, family and friends, we have much to be thankful for.

 

HONEST TRACKS

 

 

Bearfoot in the dust
from oak to oak gathering
acorns like candy.

 

SONGWRITER

 

 

                           It was always so easy to find an unhappy woman
                           Till I started looking for mine.

                                  – Moe Bandy (“It was Always So Easy”)

Young buck with broken horn
on the scent of an acorn-fat doe
and her two blue yearlings
slipped from the bunch
while the boss was busy—

the urgency and wild design
of “cheatin’ songs” plays before me,
lyrics shuffled and embellished
to fit the dim barroom lights
of my imagination

steals my senses away
from the most recent
political intrigue searching
for music—for a tune that might
sell millions on the truth.

 

 

LEGACY

 

 

Without honor,
without truth,

without charity
or compassion,

all is consumptive
dumbshow.

We have grown fat
on the numbers since

we lost our taste
for words that matter.

Like waiting for a rain
to settle dust

and bring verdancy,
the storms will come

to cleanse this earth
and thunder verily.

 

DEATH OF AN OAK

 

 

Casualty of drought and time,
no shaded bed in the tangle of dead limbs,
no burnished fruit to harvest—
but its temporary grace in death
teeters beneath the heavens.

What histories yet reside,
what sights saved within its centuries of rings,
of native talk recorded lest
forgotten of wilder beasts and men
teetering beneath the heavens?

I see myself reflected
kindly, a lifetime rooted in the same place
that I’m thankfully becoming
in a harvest of verses penned
that teeters beneath the heavens.

 

LIKE ALWAYS

 

 

Little passion in the dry,
hard hills and dust trails—
little fire in the leaves
of sycamores and willows
preparing to undress.

                    No foreplay sure,
                    no long-range rain,
                    we feed more hay

                    and wait with cows
                    growing thinner
                    in the cold,
                    sucked down
                    by growing babies.

We taste the air and search for sign:
manes and tails and moon dog rings—
our annual drama of hackneyed details
we bury our hearts and heads within

instead of the direction of a nation
without honor or integrity—

                    in God we Trust.

 

NOVEMBER DUST

 

 

For days, nothing to say,
as we wait for rain, like always
in the dust we stir,
both wild and tame.

Cow trails deep and soft,
Chinese scrolls of pad and hoof
pressed into silent verse
moving freely in the dark.

Coyote, bobcat, rattlesnake,
bear, deer and mountain lion
leave their poetry at night
to be erased each day.