Tag Archives: poetry

DEAD TREE BECKONING

Posted on February 7, 2019 by John | Leave a comment

Too wet to plow,
cold clear sky
before dawn,
green storm
forecast on the screen—

Live Oak down,
waiting patiently
in the road
to become cordwood
close to the woodstove—

to warm flesh again
and again and again.

OLANCHA

Posted on February 6, 2019 by John | 1 comment

“Autumn in Olanche” Joseph Mancuso

Racing the storm
camped on Sierra peaks
leaking sparkling snowdrifts
south of Olancha’s stone huts

                    each round rock
                    a poem fit
                    for publication:

                    perfect works
                    without chimney smoke,
                    without window glass,
                    without wooden doors
                    stand open to unfriendly futures

                    marking the trail
                    like ducks
                    towards Tehachapi
                    snow plows
                    loaded with desert sand.

I imagine time
resting here
on its way West.

1 Comment

Posted in Poems 2019

Tagged Joseph Mancuso, Olancha, poetry

FOR ME

Posted on January 22, 2019 by John | 1 comment

Naked girls reach for the light

                    downstream,
                    stage right,
                    day’s end:

with alabaster limbs washed
after a good rain, leaves
puddled in the shadows
at their feet as the sun sets
a little south of the western myth
and the three hundred pagan souls
that owned this canyon,

hills worn smooth—
centuries of cobbles seized
by knotted roots
chasing water
still claim the creek.

A battered jeep limps
home for repairs
down the road between us,
a day at play
in fresh mud and snow

and the girls keep dancing
unconcerned and unafraid

of time

for me.

1 Comment

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019

Tagged photography, poetry, sycamores

WOLF MOON

Posted on January 20, 2019 by John | 5 comments

She arrives quietly before dark night
like a lover returned
reminding how we fell

into one another’s eyes
to share the light—
to help me forget how

the planet spins with acrimony,
all the harsh words
under layers of lies

lost to her shadow cast
across the canyon—
she is a goddess rising.

5 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019

Tagged photography, poetry

STAPLES, POSTS AND WIRE

Posted on January 13, 2019 by John | Leave a comment

A long wire gate
in a steep spot
has heard replacement

swinging from pipe braces,
moving the fence,
for twenty-five years—

hears us laughing at the hole
it sometimes takes both to close—
about a list longer than our lifetimes.

On the slick hillside,
reminders realized, open
to pastoral light as I rejoice:

relieved from my word
to myself, to one another,
and to these staples, posts and wire.

BURNING BUSH

Posted on January 11, 2019 by John | 4 comments

Prolonged moment before the all-day rain
quit, evening light pressed into the gray
reflects the mist within like a lantern glowing

separate from the sinking sun, blinding colors
rage around me, superfluous extremes burning
wildly with possibilities that beg me to yield,

to gratefully acquiesce and unfence my mind.
Rooted in a woodstove ash dump, heavy
with seed pods after twenty years—Redbud

in flames, tongues of fire hanging brightly
to taste the damp air fresh with a thousand
new beginnings we’ve yet to speak of.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019

Tagged photography, poetry, Redbud

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Posted on December 31, 2018 by John | 3 comments

Another circle ‘round the sun—
                    fractured dawns
                    ride the ridgeline
                    to blind my eyes.

I am not the center of the cosmos,
                    just a passenger
                    on the planet
                    for a moment.

Green shadows reach into the Buckeyes
                    to bluing skies beyond
                    these dance hall girls
                    warming-up—

half-dressed sycamores
                    flashing flesh,
                    spilling leaves
                    awaiting sunshine.

Another circle ‘round the sun
                    between miracles of rain:
                    instant grass, instant future—
                    HAPPY NEW YEAR!

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2018, Ranch Journal

Tagged photography, poetry

LAMENT FOR YESTERDAY

Posted on December 29, 2018 by John | 1 comment

                              I’m an old time smugglin’ man and I know just what to do
                              I sell guns to the Arabs
                              I sell dynamite to the Jews
                                        – Tim Hardin (“Smugglin’ Man”) Verve 1966

Sometimes, the old songs ring true—
clever genius festering a tune
we can sing to our children
before we send them off to war.

Business explodes in the cities
of strangers, in jungles and deserts
we must liberate before we extract
our pound of flesh for the fallen—

and here at home, Dearly Beloved,
just outside the door, down the street
around the corner of the future,
nothing is secure anymore—

not the dollar, not the truth.
I want my old job back: weeding
flowerbeds for two-bits an hour—
knees deep into the rich damp dirt.