Tag Archives: photography

DAHLIA AND FROG

 

With coffee or cocktails, the tree frogs have kept us amused on the deck with death defying leaps off the table and railing, or this one at home in a dahlia that Robbin picked and stuck in a flower pot of chives. 

 

 

 

DISQUALIFIED

 

I am lost to the race, off course

to pause among the tree frogs

headed home to flower pots

 

after a night on the window glass

below the porch light

ambushing moths.  Or the quail

 

bailing from the grapefruit tree

at first light to awakening titters

before scanning for hawks.

 

There is no itch for riches

or the prizes advertised

at the Finish Line.

 

 

10-DAY FORECAST

 

 

Dew dampened dust, softened wild oat stems,

petrichor on a downcanyon breeze at four

in the black morning that smells like rain

 

just around the corner in October. I check

the 10-day forecast, craving a storm like always,

but content to paint the gray, slow drip

 

off roof and limb. Nothing but hurricanes

busy elsewhere as the planet goes to hell

as if the very End were near, knocking

 

on the door to who knows what

or which tragic prediction or wretched

explosion will engulf and fling

 

our fractured souls to the solar burn pile.

Dew dampened dust, softened wild oat stems,

petrichor on a downcanyon breeze.

 

 

CANINE CHOIR

    

 

                                                               songs that

                    without an us there’s no reason for a me.

                            – George Perreault “walking the dry ditch”)

 

Coyotes touching bases across the canyon’s canyons

shatters distance within the black, primal intonations

that combat loneliness and comfort the flesh. 

 

The dogs have learned to howl with lyrics of their own

to claim their space, protect their home. Each octave

of our quartet has a name in the dark.

 

Today, there’s no excuse to be without music,

to swim away with joy and pain from phones

that lift us, that practice and test ascension

 

for when the time comes.  How I admire

and envy its makers, how I sing along

as if no other reason for a me.

 

 

OCTOBER 2023

 

No point waiting for a rain to start the green

until October, and even then it’s blasphemy

to pray or say the word out loud to anyone—

especially with El Niño mapped and gathering

off shore, lapping Jeffer’s granite with warm waves

 

of poetry—just load and feed the hay like always.

No point worrying about the news a thousand miles away

or all the hobgoblins waiting in ambush down the road

littered with deceptions and diversions, lust and greed

to greet you—just load and feed the hay like always.

 

 

CHIPPAWAS

 

The acrid smell of battle

in the disturbed ground:

Turkey Mullein vs. Vinegarweed

 

claiming more territory

to choke out grasses—

that knee-high cling and tell

 

where you’ve been

and your approach to life.

After a good wet spring,

 

I smell my father here,

twenty-five years

after his departure

 

and remember

his lace-up Chippawas

busting clods behind a plow.

 

 

SEPTEMBER EVENING

 

I’m watching black heifers

on dry blond grass

mill around water, salt and mineral —

 

slow motion contentment,

they have begun

to move like cows,

 

bodies thickening,

they plod deliberately

towards the open gate

 

to the near hills where

tall feed waves

for their attention.

 

I imagine turning the virgin

bulls out in ninety days,

the teenage antics,

 

the final settling of the seed

and the cash-flow we’ll surely need

twenty-one months from now.

 

 

BETTER

 

 

Black morning’s fresh

downcanyon breath

primes old flesh

to ride first light

 

as it breaks the ridge

like yesterday’s charge

easy and alive in my mind.

All the good horses gone,

 

I’m ready for a stranger

that can walk out,

hold a cow and wink

through loose tethers—

 

actually believing

it could be hours away.

Only this time

we’ll do it better.

 

 

BIRDHOUSE

 

I have cut myself away

from the entangled coils

of ship and state

 

drawn more to songs

among the cactus cuckoos

at first light of dawn—

 

tossed across the pasture

deep-throated news

I can depend on

 

while a lone quail hollers

to awaken coveys

like children for school.

 

But I still don’t trust

the cry-baby whines

of our arrogant Ring Neck’s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arson

It sounds like MASH as helicopters fly over the house, back and forth to Lake Kaweah, to address 8 fires set this a.m. between 6:30 and 6:45.  All but a couple of fires in rough terrain are contained.  Three weeks ago we had 4 sets.  Every year we blade about 3 miles of firebreak between us and the road with our skid steers. Additionally fixed wing aircraft and a DC 10 jet, 2 dozers, and about 50 engines and water tenders are on the job as I write.

The spring rains brought good feed and fuel for fire that has attracted our society’s deranged, whether gang initiations or other odd and complex maladies.  Needless to say, we’ll keep our eyes peeled.