Lost in a thatch of brittle stems,
foxtails and grasses ripe
with seed, we are not extinct
despite extremes: grazing hoofs
and rising floods of rain—
the four-year drought
before they finally came
and all the honest mistakes
the ignorant have made.
We are tough and may outlast
your conceit, your
Endangered Species List.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2017
Tagged Kaweah Brodiaea, photography, poetry, wildflowers
© 2016 Neal Lett
The Sirens sing in each man’s odyssey,
in every woman’s role as Penelope,
faithful to themselves by all accounts:
old myths woven and those unwoven
memories spun yarn remembers
in the yet unfinished shrouds
in which we cloak ourselves, cast
into the present tense a tick-at-a-time.
No grace reliving past temptations
or heroics, those flashes dimming
with mundane routines of earthly
jobs, of quiet talk with our gods.
I can’t shake loose my need for truth
these days, always
skeptical of the latest news
sandwiched between advertisements
hawking sex and drugs to humans—
I sip the scandalous like wine,
leave to light the barbecue,
relieve myself
and let my unfocused stare
inhale the browning hillside
leaking five-months’ rainfall
behind the house to stream
along the gravel driveway,
past the pickup parked
where a rock wren pair
rebuild their home of stones—
Tor House in a tailpipe—
I need to see the truth.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2017, Ranch Journal
Tagged photography, poetry, rock wren nest, Tor House, wildlife
The noisy diversions
like crow and coyote
drawing mothers off
from helpless babies.
It takes a clan
to raise blackbirds, nests
stacked in the redwood,
a squadron to attack,
ride and peck the head
of a cruising crow
moaning in retreat
as its mate shops for squab
to feed their own.
Between the yard trees,
the cackling battle churns
with aerial acrobatics,
evening strategies,
each new act
our entertainment.
We dream of coasting
into a ripe green pasture
that wants for nothing.
Ripe April grasses
bellyhigh on the leaders
blind below their knees.
Mothers and babies,
pastoral dreams cross the green
with girls a horseback.
Stretched across the creek
for looks like herding humans,
not stampedes or floods.
Bowl full of croakers
deafening some dark spring night
with endless love songs.
So little water, we left
pasture gates open, turned
ranch management over
to the cows until
December brandings—
forgotten plans
stirred and mixed
to leave with dust devils
for four years straight.
Then so much rain
the rising water
took every fence between
neighbors, cattle free,
to graze up or down
twenty miles of stream
too high to cross
to cut the bull calves
as late as April aspirations
bellowing and packed
into a swaggering
700 pounds.
We wade the creek
repairing watergaps
with black plastic mesh
designed to herd humans,
an experiment worth trying
to run a ranch.
drycrikjournal 