No sense.
Nonsense.
Sometimes most clearly
through the eyes
of the bewildered
we see ourselves
spawned upon this earth
not as peacemakers
nor avenging angels,
but fallible and human
driven to plod on.
How do we find our grace
like salmon,
like rattlesnakes
born elsewhere?
How do we know the way
it makes us,
shapes us
into words,
into song?
for Merilee
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015
Tagged expression, eyes, Grace, Home, life, photography, poetry, song
Gun in the scabbard,
shooting with a camera,
the world stays the same.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged age, Blacktail Buck, hunting, photography
I’m not a real photographer—
just trying to capture
real things differently
with a point & shoot
while working in weather
wearing good cameras down
to a bad investments—
small fortunes rendered
to useless cases.
No place for tripods
moving cattle, feeding hay—
no words to hold the wild
still. No time, dearly beloved,
when deep on the inside
of an unraveling ball of twine.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Bobcat, Dry Creek, photographs, photography, poetry, weather, wildlife
Anisocoma acaulis
All the poetry
out of dark closets
spread like dandelion seed
on a gust, pages floating
to fertile landings
in the disturbed ground
to take root, unfold
each bud into a blaze
of flowers, and so on.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Anisocoma acaulis, haiku, photography, poetry, Scalebud, wildflowers
Rocks and trees remember
days between rains rising
to see how they looked
to an upside-down world,
watch hawks in the heavens
gliding beneath them.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged February 2010, photography, poetry, weekly-photo-challenge
Thin grass fades
like awakening from a dream
to truckloads of hay
like any other day
of no rain—like nothing
I have ever seen.
819 & twins
We realize the practical importance of documenting our drought, its impact on the ranch and cattle, on us. Even in dry times, our life is rich with details, most all symbolically tied to moments of truth, some of which last for a long time.
Denial can be a dangerous thing with so many lives at stake, so many cattle waiting for rain. But now I doubt a rain could help the south and west slopes of brown native clay.
As we branded the calves this winter, we culled the cows for those that had turned old and thin since we culled them last summer, most without calves, bringing them off the mountain to allow more feed for the remainder that is holding better in our granite upper-country. By the end of branding field-by-field, we had collected a truckload where we fed them hay on the irrigated pasture of only dormant summer grasses.
Clarence and Robbin trailed behind the bunch slowly following the Kubota with its single bale of hay, each cow eagerly filing past me as we got closer to the feed grounds and corrals as I assessed them, judging fullness and fitness—how they’d look in the auction ring. Moving closer, they began to buck, kick and run with excitement, with just the thought of hay.
In the corral, Robbin assured me that she didn’t see anyone she was sorry to see go. We brought the cameras that we forgot about while crowding the cows up the foreign loading chute, reserved primarily for our annual crop of calves. Now old replacement heifers, they’d never seen a truck. “You can tell,” said Van Beek, the driver, after the first two drafts, “they are ranch raised.”
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged 819, Big Valley Cattle Co., blog, culling, Drought, haiku, photography, poetry, Rick Van Beek, twins
Have I become so hardened by this prolonged drought that I am reluctant to express much joy with our recent rains, ever vulnerable, afraid to let my guard down? A drop in the proverbial bucket when considering the bigger picture, am I afraid we may be spurned again with only two months left of our grass season—too long in a dry rut?
But none of this obstructs our evening conversations, finding lines of poetry in the space between us. I pen my name—and you hear rain like applause on the roof.
drycrikjournal 