Low snow up canyon, cold
rain at dawn, vernal pools
in the pasture stand full
waiting for Wood Ducks,
waiting for spring.
Sycamores stripped naked,
their white limbs wave
from across the creek
upon these ponds of water
in the evening sun.
Headlights slash the darkness,
a caravan of jeeps
and 4-wheel drives
whine down canyon—
weary songs back home.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019, Ranch Journal
Tagged photography, poetry, snow, Sulphur Peak
Dry cordwood stacked, I crave
unpredictable clouds of change,
the cold and ice, the hail and rain
and the look of snow-capped green,
black cattle grazing an angry gray—
fancy whiskey in a glass with you
inside, woodstove sucking air to flame.
No matter what the pundits say,
it doesn’t change a thing.
Dim light above the kitchen table,
wet wedding rings beneath ceramic coffee cups,
shod horses fidget in the aluminum gooseneck
outside before daylight.
“Are Bud and Monte comin’?”
“Nope, just you and me, Babe,” he grins
showing teeth beneath his moustache.
“Any stars?” she asks. “It’s s’posed to rain,
you know, sometime today.”
“A few holes in the clouds is all,”
as he looks up at the ceiling.
“With a little luck
we ought to make it up the hill
before it gets slick,
get the cattle down
and be home by the fire
before it gets too wet.”
After a pause and long swallow, she asks,
“You know what day it is?”
“Thursday, I think”
“Is that all?” she lets trail on her way to the sink.
“Oh, I’ll be goddamned.
Happy Valentine’s Day!”
One of a kind! By my reckoning, it was over fifty years ago when I first heard Jack at the Ashgrove. Amazing!
Light dusting this afternoon down to 2,500′ on Dry Creek. Exceeding the forecast, just shy of an inch of rain overnight and this morning. It’s wet out there.
Hole in the night sky,
one last glimpse
before the eclipse—
red eye behind
a patch of clouds
and a quarter-inch
to drum upon the roof
while we sleep.
Decayed trunk:
ash and smoke.
Limb wood stacked
by noon
awaiting rain—
small deed
to clear a road
for nursery rhymes—
for an old man’s claim
on another day
to warm the flesh again
and again and again.
Too wet to plow,
cold clear sky
before dawn,
green storm
forecast on the screen—
Live Oak down,
waiting patiently
in the road
to become cordwood
close to the woodstove—
to warm flesh again
and again and again.
Between rains when we couldn’t go anywhere on the ranch, we began extricating boxes of books from the house that have been published by Dry Crik Press since 1989, including every issue of Dry Crik Review. Boxes were stashed throughout the house, office and attic that we sorted into plastic containers, now half-a-pallet in the shop—the first time that Dry Crik’s offerings have been in one spot.
Certainly not a job I relished, Robbin decided to replace the carpet in the living and dining rooms while Bob and I are in Elko. Once we started clearing the floor space, we found box after box of books that had to be dealt with. All of the Dry Crik Review issues, and Dry Crik Press publications prior to 2008, were printed in Craig Lindeman’s garage in Visalia. Craig collected leftover paper from the other print shops, and sympathetic to the cause, didn’t charge much for his work.
The books and memories were overwhelming.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Craig Lindeman, Dry Crik Press, Dry Crik Review, photography
You can tell by the tracks, including the down fence, that the bulls have started running out of work. It appears that a discussion with the neighbor’s bull took place at 3 locations on the downhill side. Testosterone in the air, our 2 bulls on the uphill side went head to head for a while before one was pushed through the wire. The real battle that crippled our bull took place on the neighbor’s side where we retrieved him. Good news is that the fence is repaired and the crippled bull is in a pasture by himself.
