As Apollo heads to the barn
to feed his steeds, to hang
silver-studded harnesses
on their pegs to retire,
the black comes back
and darkness begs our dreams
to dance in another light
as mind and flesh run free.
The light within illuminates
what we crave and fear—
storylines for stage plays
directed in our sleep.
Some shake us awake
to write them down—and
some remain on our minds.
Low blacks in sweats, a kid
finds the bench I watch people from
while smoking a cigarette away
from the ocean-view rooms—
sidles-up like an innocuous snake
or a squirrel from under the boardwalk
to share conversation with a man
three times his age. He wants to know
if I think the world is flat—
waves crashing, tide retreating,
blaze compressed in the haze—
he’s got obnoxious down pat.
Clutching a lighter in his tight fist,
I leave him a smoke on the bench
to watch it roll off the edge.
Moonstone Beach,
Sea Chest:
oysters on the half shell,
calamari, Eberle
cab and crab legs
awaken to fog
two and a half hours
and forty degrees
from home.
Fat calves in the pipeline
to your plate, cows
vacationing on hollow dry
bronze feed, the scent of cuds
early to the shade
of sycamore and oak trees,
quiet gossiping telepathically—
it’s taken days to unwind,
coast to a more pensive pace.
Somewhere amid the vegetables,
a bloom, a flower begging notice,
suggesting we might see beyond
ourselves, our guilt and fears,
and all the calamities teetering
on this planet, for a moment.
A beacon for the eyes, a course
to follow on choppy seas,
a remnant burst of energy
blazing bravely at the sun’s
112 degrees. Bless the gardeners
planting seed we cannot eat!
Enough to give away like poetry,
the garden keeps us near
humble dirt anticipating
the quick fix of accomplishment
flourishing overnight, a short walk
from the kitchen table—a crop
to share with good neighbors—and
the ground squirrels and cottontails,
the bugs, birds and worms
that arrive before the harvest.
It’s never been about the money
saved instead of labor,
nor about feeding nature—but
more about living with
the gift of earth and flesh.
Thirty days into summer, the heat
owns us now and we yield, change
our ways to work into the shade
of anything between us and the sun.
Out of habit, a neighbor’s cow stands
beneath the skeleton of an old oak,
a ridge-bound casualty of the drought—
a silhouette mid-morning as I head home
branded in my brain like a wrought iron
logo for outdoor living hanging
from an arched concrete entrance—
beyond which I am blinded
by the white light of my delirium.
I close my eyes to see clearly again,
turn away and pray I may be wrong.
A plodding grace with each footfall
of cloven hooves upon soft centers
of winding trails engineered to grade,
cows claim this ground, claim us as well,
tracking seasons of the sun ever-circling.
Behind fences grazing shade to shade,
they worry not about the days ahead.
How we envy and emulate their easiness—
hang totems to draw the cow gods closer.
Since the four-year drought when we had to leave the gates of each mountain pasture in Greasy open to secure water, we haven’t had a decent count on our cows. Drought-killed trees and limbs on fences haven’t helped us manage our numbers either. But we do know how many calves we branded in Greasy.
As we’ve gathered to wean and harvest our crop of calves, all but one calf was accounted for as of last Thursday, a calf that may have died sometime after branding. Nevertheless, Robbin and Terri left early Friday in the Kubota with a bale of hay, salt and mineral to look for tracks, to insure we got all the calves.
Evening wine, and
I still want to celebrate
the last marked calf
on the books, in
the weaning pen, out
of the brush and rock
with cows behind
the Kubota and a bale
of hay, Robbin and Terri
on the cellphone calling
for a gooseneck, for Bob
and I to haul him home.
Two frozen bottles of water,
four beers with lemons, cool
reward in an insulated pouch.
(iPhone selfie: Terri Drewry)
Moonrise at her throat, a glowing pendant,
hair spilling into the creek as she sleeps, and
when the light leaves, her dark silhouette
begins to breathe as the hills come alive at night.
Native women dance where they have worn
the ground to a powdery, fine dust, easy to inhale—
their chanting rises with the moon as coyotes answer
from the canyons these past ten thousand years.
Temporary, we become lost in the landscape—
our souls, the depth of our flesh absorbed,
secreted in her creases for safekeeping as we wait
just beyond the reach of certain change.
drycrikjournal 