Tag Archives: poetry

COTYLEDONS DAY THREE

Posted on November 11, 2022 by | 2 comments

 

Three-day one-inch-rain,

warm wet dirt germinating

green hair on steep slopes.

 

 

(Click to enlarge)

 

 

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Posted in Haiku 2022, Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal

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GOOD FORTUNE

Posted on November 10, 2022 by | 1 comment

 

After a slow three-day rain,

clay dust dark brown and firm,

we think we see a tinge of green

 

before wet seed has time to burst

with open-handed cotyledons

through the saturated dirt.

 

Yesterday, on the optometrist’s screen

I see my eyeballs and optic nerves

that anticipate such good fortune:

 

bare ground, sloping hillsides

carpeted with short green—

a start to change our luck.

 

                                    for Terence Miller

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal

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IT

Posted on November 8, 2022 by | 1 comment

 

 

Who bankrolls

the nasty TV ads

that verge on slander,

 

the propositions

to make law

no attorney comprehends,

 

then leave it up

to the common man

to cast his vote

 

for the profit in IT,

be IT self-righteous egos

or just plain cash?

 

Imagine the power-rush

spending someone else’s money

and then to get paid

 

with all the perks

for IT

for life.

 

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022

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QUEEN

Posted on November 5, 2022 by | 6 comments

 

The weather here is queen,

haggard goddess dodging phone calls,

prayers—she gathers storms

 

like cattle to market

leaving empty pastures bare to cook

for sometimes years—

 

sometimes centuries displacing

civilizations for archeological

supposition and conjecture.

 

We cannot know her mind—

she is old and forgetful

and often wanders in a haze.

 

But when we smell her

approaching on the wind

our dry skin tightens as

 

we become like reckless children

turned loose to prepare

the fires for her arrival,

 

be it wrath or cordial,

for she is queen

of eternity.

 

6 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal

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BFORE THE RAIN

Posted on November 2, 2022 by | 2 comments

 

The cows know the way

following the idling sounds

of the diesel hay truck

 

to the feed grounds just beyond

the glacial slab of granite

honeycombed with grinding holes

 

of another era

when 300 Natives

made a living in this canyon.

 

After the flood

they moved the road

away from the creek in ’69—

 

exposing human bones.

The cast iron well head

for the red brick slaughterhouse

 

stands like a gravestone

among dead oak limbs—for

a time between then and now.

 

A cow turns back to attend to her calf

swallowing dust, another murmurs

trust that there will be hay.

 

*          *           *          *

 

0.28″

 

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ON BARE ACRES

Posted on November 1, 2022 by | Leave a comment

 

 

The black hole in the barn

has grown since August

as we peel-off long green

 

(high-dollar hay) vacuumed-up

by cows nursing hungry calves.

Al the prognosticators

 

tease us with promises

of thunderstorms tonight

if only to settle the dust.

 

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RESTORING THE DECK

Posted on October 31, 2022 by | 3 comments

 

Tenuous, dangerous navigating

redwood sagging on rotting joists

even the dogs avoided

 

and it took years to make repairs,

slices of time wedged between

perpetual routines

 

caring for the survivors of drought

when there was no grass or water.

It took the expertise of a patient friend

 

we have learned to love

and work with—Robbin and I

comprising only half-a-man.

 

                        for Jeff Spoelstra  

 

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LATE OCTOBER

Posted on October 24, 2022 by | 2 comments

 

They’ve taken Saturday’s rain away

with future promises

like plastic magic debt

no one intends to pay.

 

We’ve been here before,

crooning to godesses

not to forget us

like the hopeless homeless.

 

We are this ground

rooted into the future

like the plodding lives of cattle,

trusting, trusting, trusting….

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal

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DEJA VU HAIKU

Posted on October 18, 2022 by | 3 comments

 

1.

Gray dust clouds rising

behind cows down powdered trails

off these bare mountains.

 

2.

The diesel feed truck

awakes a bawling chorus

to claim the canyon.

 

3.

All imperative

and hungry, it twists our guts—

La Niña pending.

 

 

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Posted in Haiku 2022, Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal

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WORDS

Posted on September 9, 2022 by | 5 comments

                                                Change is made of choices

                                                & choices are made of character.

                                                                    – Amanda Gorman (“We Write”)

 

Nothing stays the same,

even the Earth wobbles on its axis.

 

We are not the same people—

we were raised with, and finally by.

 

Reason and truth have been inflated so

they have no value now, like fiat currency.

 

Yesterday, a man’s word defined him.

Today he speaks a foreign tongue.

 

But that’s all we have, a lifetime of words

to ease the speed and pain of change.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022

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