What calamity is greater than no contentment,
And what flaw greater than the passion for gain?
Tao Te Ching (“46”) Book of Songs)
Following ten years drought,
gusty evenings under gray clouds
add depth to blond hillsides—
contrasting tomorrow’s summer feed
that begs embracing,
that begs old flesh to awaken,
but begs no mention but to look
with an empty mind.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged c. 6th century B.C.E., Classical Chinese Poetry, contentment, Drought, empty mind, photography, poetry, weather
Yesteryear calls out of the blue
in these piebald canyons turning brown
yawning across a shrinking creek
to leave a confidential message—
not in words, but deeds. Faces,
always faces. Big George Hubble
in grade school who loaned me a dime
for a lemon bar popsicle
I never paid back. Some call
from out of the ground
that I never knew had gone on
to find their relief.
Some faces leave no names,
or none I can remember,
to console me as I did them
during the paisley days of a jungle war
I missed for a football knee
trying to be a hero.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged fate, memory, old days, photography, poetry, Viet Nam War, weather
Stealing the warmth of gravel
an inch at a time, famished
after winter’s long dream
of what’s on the menu:
blind hatch appetizers
or a full-grown squeeze.
https://drycrikjournal.com/2021/09/04/tight-squeeze/
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged Gopher Snake, native community, photographs, poetry, springtime
As children in the mountains
we learned to walk in the dark
on the uneven ground we knew
sometimes shadowed by starlight
or an occasional moon.
It was a wonder watching it rise
behind the far pines
as we lay on our backs
supposing excitedly about something
long since resolved,
but such a luxury to feel the hair
on familiar cedars, puzzle
over the sap of sugar pines,
fish the river for adventure
in the old days.
Time has simplified my map
to safe and basic trails
with many landmarks,
each with a story
to remind me where I am.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged children, dark, mountains, old days, photography, poetry
The hollow sounds before daylight,
hillside Roadrunners awakening in the black,
their plaintive solos, reverberating notes
awaiting an answer, a location, a place
to be filled in the future, a pile of twigs
within the spines of cactus
beneath this soft comforter of clouds,
days trailing a meager rain to shield us
and the dew upon the grass.
The day is yet empty, moments awaiting
purpose and order. In my mind, I see
the tools I’ll need to be useful.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged dawn, order, photography, poetry, purpose, Roadrunners, useful
What is left to add to the millions of words
in books of poems stacked on shelves around me,
as if by some osmotic marvel they might impart
a simple brilliance, a lasting, unfettered glow
that I might capture and travel the page by?
My early morning sojourns into darkness seek
reveries I can hear and feel with my hands,
well-apart from the blinding light of day,
that prismed cacophony of lies driven by
man’s ugly nature of greed and power.
I crave blackness under clouds and crisp
moon shadows in a breeze, redrawing
constellations from twinkling starlight
like the ceiling of the old Fox Theater
from where I believed Walt Disney fell.
The primal bellow of a bull or the prolonged
serenades of a hundred coyotes in the canyon,
January is a month in love at night. Closing
the distance between hoots, the owls
have finally agreed on a tree to raise a family.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged another world, darkness, poetry, traveling at night
Long dark shadows in the canyons,
cattle hard to see. They don’t need us now,
heads down somewhere on the mountain,
ground too wet to help them anyway—
all the excuses I need to write poetry.
We fed hay all last year, filled the barn
three times waiting for a rain. These Christmas
storms: miracles to rejuvenate the earth
for man and beast, birds and insects,
steep hillsides begging to explode in leafy
salad greens—iridescent gifts in the sunlight,
like the old days, for years in a row that
have since gone dry and farther in between.
Nothing stays the same, just ask the skeletons
of old oaks where the natives ground acorns.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Tagged cattle, Christmas, Drought, grass, Natives, New Year's, oak skeletons, poetry, rain
In these hills, a man finds space that feels familiar and friendly, and it must ask in ways where we hang empty words like ribbon just to find our way back - but we stay a moment and let our horses blow. They feel it - perhaps they feel it first and do the asking of the place, or perhaps it is the shards of light diffused at dawn upon the many-legged oaks standing knee-deep in grasses on the near ridge that shield us from man’s square creations, his cubic thinking. Perhaps the sensual grace of limb or slope, or granite worn to look inside our minds, but there are places that ask nothing else of us but to breathe and taste the air, inhale with our eyes and drink with our flesh for just a moment. Once dared, it becomes ever-easier to be enveloped with the wild, an addictive peace that embraces awe as eagerly as a child might love - where a man can ride beyond his time and station, beyond the tracks of those before him: spaces that beg a moment’s notice where both grand and simple revelations are left and learned and lived in place.
Dark morning chill stirs the flesh to welcome winter waiting for flaming tongues to lick between dry Manzanita branches igniting Blue oak in the woodstove’s glow. I recall storms, the floods and endless downpours, creek too high to cross for thirty days and pray for anything wet enough to start the grass for cows and calves— for my sanity, something akin to normal in these crazy days of politics and pandemic— something to trust as right as rain— something to believe in.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged Calves, cows, pandemic, poetry, politics, rain, winter
It’s an art countin’ cattle, ‘specially calves— it takes concentration to keep a mind closed to everything else and get the same answer twice. Dad maintained that the simpler the mind the more dependable the count— the only excuse I’ve got.
drycrikjournal 