Tag Archives: poetry

Mizpah

Posted on January 26, 2015 by | 1 comment

image

 

It was good to see the historic Mizpah Hotel open for business again in Tonopah, Nevada when we passed through Sunday on our way to Elko. Traffic was light across the Great Basin, as we only met 74 cars between Tonopah and Carlin, some 250 miles.

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TOGETHER

Posted on January 25, 2015 by | 5 comments
Phacelia (Scorpionweed) - May 15, 2011

Phacelia (Scorpionweed) – May 15, 2011

 

If we all lean in the same direction
maybe we can change
the world.

 

 

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CHASING SUNLIGHT

Posted on January 24, 2015 by | Leave a comment
Twining Brodeaia - May 1, 2011

Twining Brodeaia – May 1, 2011

 

Late to the party
in the thick of spring—
just chasing space and sunlight.

 

 

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INTO SPRING

Posted on January 23, 2015 by | 4 comments
Sierra Tidy Tips - May 15, 2011

Sierra Tidy Tips – May 15, 2011

 

On the edge of where I’ve been
a vaster world waits
for me to arrive.

 

 

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ON THE SEMI-ARID EDGE

Posted on January 22, 2015 by | 10 comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The big dogs are drilling deeper,
pumping the last of a million years
of underground water, each river

dammed into furrows to farm
the empty Laguna de Tache.
Sixty years ago, when red lights

stopped in every railroad town,
colorful cornucopias spilled
from billboards onto Highway 99

bragging fruit or vegetable capitals
of another world, and huge Big Oranges
squeezed juice every ten miles.

On the semi-arid edge of change,
we beg for rain and dream of floods
to take this Valley back in time.

 

                    *     *     *

 

1876 Tulare County Map

Wiki: Laguna de Tache, Tulare Lake

 

 

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HIS HERONS

Posted on January 21, 2015 by | 2 comments

 

Easter 2014

Easter 2014

 

After rain in spring, I see my father
standing among a half-dozen others
atop fresh mounds of dirt, hear him

praise the Great Blue Heron as the best
‘gopher-getter around’. As the creek
warms, he glides up canyon early,

spends his days wading shallows,
coasting home in the gloaming.
Punctual, you could set your watch

by his circles to work each day,
depending on season and crop.
When it all mattered too much,

he’d slip up the road to check
the feed and fences, the condition
of my cows grazing with his herons.

 

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EMPTY PROMISES

Posted on January 20, 2015 by | Leave a comment

 

March 10, 2014

March 10, 2014

 

Riding rafts of red above
clouds of dust,
we could breathe for a moment.

 

 

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IMAGINATION

Posted on January 19, 2015 by | 6 comments

IMG_1980

 

How easily she could say,
‘it’s all in your mind—’
deny, dismiss what she knew

could be true, if we let it
when we were children
pretending to be grown up—

playing games
with our imaginations,
mornings drumming music

on eucalyptus roots
before the school bus stopped
our spontaneous chants.

With rusty tools and sticks,
horse drawn relics
and Model T wrecks

we took off for town—
took turns driving
wild steeds or hot rod cars

depending on time—just
as much as we wanted
to get there.

 

 

WPC(4) — “Serenity”

 

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FIDDLENECK

Posted on January 18, 2015 by | 9 comments

IMG_2888

 

Looking back at tracks in the clouds,
you spring the gate closed—
trapped forever.

 

 

WPC(3) — “Serenity”

 

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CLARKIA ENHANCED

Posted on January 17, 2015 by | 2 comments

IMG_3071_2

 

Unfolding into space, hills
from peaks to plains unending
time beyond and past

the horizons of this moment
resting among the eroded
where I am near-nothing,

these specks of rock
spread out before me
like petals opening—

my nakedness
laid bare
as part of the landscape.

 

 

WPC(2) — “Serenity”

 

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