Tag Archives: poetry

OUTSIDE MUSIC

 

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                                                                                       “listen to that music.
                                               The self we hold so dear will soon be gone.”

                                                       – Gary Snyder (“Anger, Cattle and Achilles”)

I’ve packed a rifle since I was ten
following cow trails in these hills
listening to music: the Red Tail’s cry,

its feathers rush overhead,
plummeting for fun—a calling
to another life without accouterments.

In time, we collect clear moments
of ourselves, fresh glimpses stamped
and saved that weigh nothing, cost

nothing, yet live behind our eyes.
No word for the first murmur
of a cow to its wobbly, wet calf

forever branded in our brains—
no word for the outside music
played with poetry and song.

                                               ~

 

Weekly Photo Challenge (1): “Careful” / “Full of Care”

 

PERSPECTIVE

 

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There is no blank sheet—
no white, unblemished page
on which to letter words
together, even in the highlands.

Once when I was there in awe
and almost nothing, irrelevant
but to breathe and drink from streams
of melting snow off peaks

like granite teeth sunk into the blue,
blue sky, lost in my insignificance—
the paper I carried from the world
below was smudged and dirty.

So it is with we humans, never free,
never clean enough to pen
the perfect words without shadows,
without darkness leaking starlight.

 

CIRCLES IN AUGUST

 

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We track circles on the same ground
through brush and granite rock,
over mountains and down canyons

patched with spooky skeletons
of trees, broken limbs at their feet.
Last year’s blond and brittle feed

folds into dust under foot, under wheel
into decent firebreaks swirling around us
as we check springs and clean water troughs

measured with our eye. We carry hay,
fat cows come running six to the bale
once a week, fresh calves knocking

at the door of a new and wobbly world—
waiting to inhale one hundred degree heat.
Too soon to rain, we plod like cows

in dusty circles, all soft trails
lead to water and shade, or to the hum
of solar pumps in abandoned wells.

 

VAPOR

 

March 14, 2014

 

Awakened slowly,
drinking promises of rain
with people on time.

 

 

“photo_challenge/early-bird”/

THE APPEARANCE OF THINGS

Supermoon, June 23, 2013

Supermoon, June 23, 2013

 

What gift of light
have I to offer
dark mornings,

the coyote’s howl,
of stars reflecting suns
above the ridgeline

of her body sleeping,
breathing beside us
in this canyon apart

from the news
of mortal men
and women staged

to sell consumption
and wealth
to the enslaved—

before I fail
to be so generous
in the daylight?

 

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR

 

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Hollow pipe songs at first light
pierce the darkness, own the dawn
with answered calls from oak trees

and granite piles of fractured rock
balanced on the edge of time
frozen around me. Early morning

solos grow into a chorus of chants
on the other side of the door,
a primitive awakening to greet me,

to ignore my circle of chores.
We’ve become part of the landscape
they return to, generations born

near cattle, horses and water troughs.
After these dry years, a colony—
a reunion of Roadrunners nesting.

 

HEAVENLY

 

Ithuriel’s Spear Triteleia laxa – March 18, 2015

Ithuriel’s Spear Triteleia laxa – March 18, 2015

 

When the angel’s touch
spills with long-stemmed purple blooms,
no room for deceit.

 

 

Wiki: “Ithuriel”

 

LIKE BUMBLEBEES

 

Ithuriel’s Spear Triteleia laxa - March 18, 2015

Ithuriel’s Spear Triteleia laxa – March 18, 2015

 

We jump into spring
without looking or thinking,
craving wild nectar.

 

 

DAY’S WORK SONG

 

Pretty Face, Triteleia ixioides - April 11, 2014

Pretty Face, Triteleia ixioides – April 11, 2014

 

Steep east slope damp,
tall green grass slick,
pale Pretty Faces hold their grins
beneath Buckeyes and Live Oaks—

                    heavy thatch of fallen limbs
                    holds the old fence down,
                    shelters a rat’s nest.

Nature has been winning
since I was here last
with the chain saw,
packing posts afoot
and splicing rusty wire
to keep cattle straight—
pretending to be in charge.

I see my mark: old cuts
with decomposing rings.
                    Not near as near
                    as in my mind—
four years since the low snows,
ten more for this six-inch growth.

Steep east slope damp,
tall green grass slick,
pale Pretty Faces hold their grins
beneath Buckeyes and Live Oaks.

 

FEAST IN THE FIDDLENECK

 

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Beneath the blankets
of fuzzy bloom, arms and legs
serve dinner for two.