Tag Archives: poetry

Cuckoo Cuckcoo Coo

Posted on May 5, 2024 by | 4 comments

 

The same old song at dawn

remains unchanged at dark—

the Roadrunners’ refrain

 

                 across the pasture,

                 lest we forget

                world affairs…

 

 

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White Golden Poppies

Posted on April 29, 2024 by | 4 comments

 

Not enough gold left

in the last of the poppies

as spring fades away.

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Haiku 2024, Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal

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MOONSTONE BEACH, END OF THE TRAIL

Posted on March 22, 2024 by | 3 comments

 

No lone warriors left on weary ponies,

we gather at the edge of the West subdued

and yield to the fleeting moment beyond

our reach or reason—to be washed,

wave after wave, with our fears away.

 

All the people now in the picture—

I could have cropped the photo

to thirty-thousand yesteryears ago,

or by much shorter measure dialed it

to a certain future none will see.

 

Our hair is gray.

 

 

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BONE ON BONE

Posted on March 17, 2024 by | 6 comments

 

All the places

I worked and played

too hard

are wearing on me

 

for this moment

I have trailed

with discarded rhymes

and poetry

 

even I don’t quite

understand

why I had to kiss

the wild so deeply,

 

why I had to walk

the fence

and dream beyond

the barbed wire.

 

 

 

 

6 Comments

Posted in Deck Poems, Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal

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CELEBRATION OF LIFE

Posted on March 16, 2024 by | 2 comments

 

Occasionally, neighbors become good friends,

and so it’s been with Steve and Jody Fuller, Robbin and I.

 

I am going to read a short poem that I wrote for them

when my mother was dying in the hospital back in 2010.

 

 

 

LAST NIGHT’S LEFTOVERS

 

We pray for heart attacks, Mack trucks and lightening

as our way out, trading tales of die-hard mothers

like rattlesnake stories, each triggering another –

 

pouring wine with whiskey rants to laugh

at the sad truth we can’t improve, can’t make easier,

can’t change, but in ourselves.  Out of the rain,

 

my great bay horse, a bag of bones at thirty,

paws the gate in the barn for more grain – an indignant

impatience I trained for years, my mother’s hands

 

in mine again. It’s rained five days straight,

blew the barn down, blew a tire in a rockslide,

got a ticket parked too long at the hospital,

 

and we look up into the gray wanting to escape

town and traffic, find home and recuperate

with neighbors and last night’s leftovers.

 

                                                – for Steve & Jody

 

 

 

Steve left his mark on the hearts of us all.

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2010, poetry, Ranch Journal

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JOINT ACCOUNTS

Posted on March 15, 2024 by | Leave a comment

 

Yesterday’s rain

runs in rivulets

towards the creek

 

across the shoulder

of the road

and growing traffic—

 

Pond Turtle shell

glistening still

with all the wild

 

totems we lay claim to

in our joint accounts.

 

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SURPRISE RAIN

Posted on March 10, 2024 by | 3 comments 

Mud from head to toe
before the bus to school,
how could I know

I’d never bring it home—
never be the hero
of black and white westerns.

But a lifetime chasing rainbows
has been enough
without the pot of gold.



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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal

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BODY BURNING DETAIL

Posted on February 14, 2024 by | 2 comments

 

                  Arms shrunk to seal flippers

                  Charred buttocks thrust skyward

                  They burned for five days.

                                    – Bill Jones (“The Body Burning Detail”)

 

The tangle of limbs piled

like Bill’s poem from Nam,

oak skeletons and cadavers

 

turned hard and brittle

ache from drought,

rings parched of memory,

 

native history become ash

up in smoke. Perhaps my years

personify the tree, allow

 

empathy for these witnesses

to wild centuries before the West

was tamed, offering acorn meal

 

and shade for cattle,

ever-tuned to the telepathic

as they chew their cuds.

 

 

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REVISITING RIP VAN WINKLE

Posted on February 2, 2024 by | 2 comments

 

Flash after flash above

a steely barrage of pellets—

an opaque torrent of gray rain

 

cut by the crack of thunder

as if the gods were falling timber

or sawing logs—

 

or just inebriated

in the mountains

playing nine pins.

 

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, Ranch Journal

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MOM AND POP GROCERY

Posted on January 29, 2024 by | 2 comments

                                  How I wish to sail away in my little skiff
                                  And high on the waters, live out the rest of my life.

                                                 – Su Tung-p’o (“Immortal at the River”)

Harold and Nettie kept accounts of all the local

farmhands in a shoebox, cashed their checks

and paid their bills on Saturdays,

the balance spent behind the neon blue

Burgie sign in the dark-half of the store—

worn men glancing-out into the blinding light

at the wagonload of soda pop bottles

we gleaned from weeds along the road

to trade for Cokes and candy.

They offered ‘Flying A’ gasoline before

they moved the grocery to the Yokohl

when they widened the highway,

keeping busy into old age until

a week after Harold retired

to his skiff on high waters.

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Posted in Poems 2024, poetry

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