No lone warriors left on weary ponies,
we gather at the edge of the West subdued
and yield to the fleeting moment beyond
our reach or reason—to be washed,
wave after wave, with our fears away.
All the people now in the picture—
I could have cropped the photo
to thirty-thousand yesteryears ago,
or by much shorter measure dialed it
to a certain future none will see.
Our hair is gray.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry
Tagged Cambria, Moonstone Beach, photography, poetry, Sea Chest Oyster Bar
All the places
I worked and played
too hard
are wearing on me
for this moment
I have trailed
with discarded rhymes
and poetry
even I don’t quite
understand
why I had to kiss
the wild so deeply,
why I had to walk
the fence
and dream beyond
the barbed wire.
Posted in Deck Poems, Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged age, photography, poetry
Occasionally, neighbors become good friends,
and so it’s been with Steve and Jody Fuller, Robbin and I.
I am going to read a short poem that I wrote for them
when my mother was dying in the hospital back in 2010.
LAST NIGHT’S LEFTOVERS
We pray for heart attacks, Mack trucks and lightening
as our way out, trading tales of die-hard mothers
like rattlesnake stories, each triggering another –
pouring wine with whiskey rants to laugh
at the sad truth we can’t improve, can’t make easier,
can’t change, but in ourselves. Out of the rain,
my great bay horse, a bag of bones at thirty,
paws the gate in the barn for more grain – an indignant
impatience I trained for years, my mother’s hands
in mine again. It’s rained five days straight,
blew the barn down, blew a tire in a rockslide,
got a ticket parked too long at the hospital,
and we look up into the gray wanting to escape
town and traffic, find home and recuperate
with neighbors and last night’s leftovers.
– for Steve & Jody
Steve left his mark on the hearts of us all.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2010, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, photography, poetry
Yesterday’s rain
runs in rivulets
towards the creek
across the shoulder
of the road
and growing traffic—
Pond Turtle shell
glistening still
with all the wild
totems we lay claim to
in our joint accounts.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, photography, poetry, POND TURTLE, rain, TOTEMS
Mud from head to toe
before the bus to school,
how could I know
I’d never bring it home—
never be the hero
of black and white westerns.
But a lifetime chasing rainbows
has been enough
without the pot of gold.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, photography, poetry, rain, rainbows, weather
Arms shrunk to seal flippers
Charred buttocks thrust skyward
They burned for five days.
– Bill Jones (“The Body Burning Detail”)
The tangle of limbs piled
like Bill’s poem from Nam,
oak skeletons and cadavers
turned hard and brittle
ache from drought,
rings parched of memory,
native history become ash
up in smoke. Perhaps my years
personify the tree, allow
empathy for these witnesses
to wild centuries before the West
was tamed, offering acorn meal
and shade for cattle,
ever-tuned to the telepathic
as they chew their cuds.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged "Blood Trails", burn piles, dead standing oaks, Drought, Dry Creek, Fire, personification, photography, poetry
Flash after flash above
a steely barrage of pellets—
an opaque torrent of gray rain
cut by the crack of thunder
as if the gods were falling timber
or sawing logs—
or just inebriated
in the mountains
playing nine pins.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, Ranch Journal
Tagged Atmospheric River, Dry Creek, lightning, photography, Pineapple Express, poetry, rain, thunder, weather
How I wish to sail away in my little skiff
And high on the waters, live out the rest of my life.
– Su Tung-p’o (“Immortal at the River”)
Harold and Nettie kept accounts of all the local
farmhands in a shoebox, cashed their checks
and paid their bills on Saturdays,
the balance spent behind the neon blue
Burgie sign in the dark-half of the store—
worn men glancing-out into the blinding light
at the wagonload of soda pop bottles
we gleaned from weeds along the road
to trade for Cokes and candy.
They offered ‘Flying A’ gasoline before
they moved the grocery to the Yokohl
when they widened the highway,
keeping busy into old age until
a week after Harold retired
to his skiff on high waters.
Voices lift above the rhythmic drum beats
from Elko, Nevada—dear friends claimed
for over thirty years and seven hundred miles:
a ‘Cowboy Disneyland’, I declared having found
my tribe in ’89, Ian rising on the wind and Jack,
rambling from the Ashgrove, ever-ready
in my mind to fly the thin, clean air
over sawtoothed peaks of frosted snow
like sharp, white teeth gnawing at the sky—
at heaven, a high desert ascension between
here and there where nothing stays the same
but hugs, handshakes and easy camaraderie.
Posted in Elko, Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry
Tagged Elko, National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, poetry
(c) Tulare County Library
Kentucky native Nathaniel Vise was born in 1810. He voted in the election to form Tulare County 1852 and led the competition between Woodsville and Visalia (named after him) for the new County seat. In that same election, my mother’s great-grandfather, John Cutler, leading the contingent for Woodsville, became the County’s first elected judge.
An outsider, I imagine timbers
between me and town—
now an amoebic city flooding
its values onto orchard ground:
big box stores, stucco cathedrals,
and condos stacked like cordwood.
Ramparts only in my mind
to keep the natives safe
from the shiniest attractions
as sleepy-headed commuters
race 198 to stew in tail light gridlock—
impatience rising with their exhaust.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024
Tagged John Cutler, Nate Vise, poetry, Tulare County, Visalia
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