Tag Archives: poetry

FLIES

Posted on December 29, 2014 by John | 4 comments

Come December, they are slow
to leave, cleave to the screen door
to warm by the woodstove

before the freeze, waiting with housedogs
for an opening—for an afterthought
pausing between the in and the outside,

the delivery of groceries or a child
as wavering door stop. They are slow
about dying, cling to the window glass

while looking smugly at the frost,
or fly haphazardly to bump into flesh,
rudely investigating every orifice

as their last chance and place
to continue the race—with such purpose
as to enrage a well-awakened Saint.

4 Comments

Posted in Poems 2014, Ranch Journal

Tagged Dry Creek, flies, poetry, weather

CEREMONY

Posted on December 28, 2014 by John | 8 comments

Blue Oak rounds too big for the woodstove
collect near the splitter in a pile—energy
stored in rings of sun, years of rain—
the severed dead, hard and dry inside.

We look ahead to ceremony, prepare
as we go, set aside the burls and forks,
too twisted to split, for the outside fire
and generations of flickering faces.

I see my mother in my grand-daughter’s
eyes, leave us for a moment for the flames
lapping the remains of a stump—the call
from beyond that burns within us all—

she is drawn away. It is the coming back
to her mother’s lap, her bemused recognition
of going somewhere within white coals
beyond this half-circle of family

that I see my mother in her face
while the meat cooks. We talk, lift glasses
in the smoke that swirls undecidedly
around us, just out of reach of the flames.

Early tracks upon the morning frost,
someone will rise to stir the embers,
to rekindle conversation from cold night
hoping to keep the celebration alive.

WPC(2) — “Warmth”

8 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014

Tagged celebration, Ceremony, Christmas, Drought, Dry Creek, Fire, photographs, poetry, rain, water, weather, weekly-photo-challenge

CHRISTMAS 2014

Posted on December 27, 2014 by John | Leave a comment

She breathes, her flesh
with hair enough to hold cattle
and rain to her breast

should it come hard and fast
to fill the canyons. Gray clouds
linger with nothing left

but to offer color and contrast
to these hills greening yet
in Christmas Day’s last light.

Black from the bottoms,
sunset’s shadow crawls
to an island lit with rosy hues

dotted with the dark silhouettes
of cows and calves grazing
the iridescence of fresh green.

She breathes, her flesh
with hair enough to hold us close
to her soft breast.

BALL OF TWINE

Posted on December 26, 2014 by John | Leave a comment

My head spins
another yarn
about the old days,
the old ways
we found comfort
with a job done.

The harvest of Emperors,
wobbly wagonloads
of purple grapes
picked and swamped
from field to shed
before the rains came.

The many hands
wearing a day’s work
beneath September’s sun
well into dark
for a dollar an hour—
each rich
with a small part
of another accomplishment
that dared God’s
impending forces
to escape with the crop.

Another currency
we all shared
with profanity
meant for the moment—
damning Him
and ourselves
when we failed.

COWBOY TALK

Posted on December 24, 2014 by John | 6 comments

We start with trails
that haven’t changed
near the top of the world—

                    switchbacks stacked
                    in scree
                    to gaps between
                    bare peaks like teeth
                    above the timberline
                    chewing at the blue,
                    blue sky

and the solitude

                    waiting in ambush
                    to welcome you home
                    to rainbow trout
                    now spawning,

                    green backs packed
                    in the leak
                    of a snowmelt lake
                    where white clouds
                    float upon water.

                    Alone in the smear
                    of starlight falling
                    upon solid rock,
                    it glows
                    like a lantern.

We start with trails
we know
how to get there.

for Lee and Earl

6 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014

Tagged backcountry, Great Western Divide, Kaweah, Paregien Ranch, photographs, poetry, Sawtooth Peak, snowmelt, solitude, trout, water, weather

WITH EASE

Posted on December 23, 2014 by John | 7 comments

Old violence is not too old to beget new values.
– Robinson Jeffers (“The Bloody Sire”)

With ease, we have evolved to softer versions
of ourselves—no longer lean, Dust Bowl men
in coveralls waiting for work and a weather change,

sinew no longer strained to stretch the harvest
of endless furrows. Within earshot of lamenting
old men leaning on fences, I was part of a future

doomed with easy-living, and so I have been
by comparison, yet with little time for visiting
face-to-face, eye-to-eye. We have become immune

to the violence next door, alive in cyberspace, and
deaf to war—the clash of sword-on-shield or bigger
better guns barking how to cull the herd—with ease,

we have evolved to envy dumb animals and birds
in touch with the sky, yearning for ignorance
and bliss. And all the old values now lost to youth.

7 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014

Tagged "The Bloody Sire", birds, Drought, evolution, Hereford Bull, photographs, poetry, Robinson Jeffers, values, Violence, war, wildlife

BEGINNING

Posted on December 21, 2014 by John | 2 comments

Snow up-canyon, dull green slopes on ashen
skies. With a few clear angels, tiny lights
dim and blink independently on the bare

Red Bud wrapped from last year’s Christmas,
before dawn. Leftovers after drought that
you can see from the road at night, singing

‘we’re still alive—’. Coming back to myself,
a black bull grumbles across the dry creek bed,
listening for the whereabouts of an answer.

First light prolonged at Winter Solstice that
I could not imagine waiting for us—I am
surprised with silence of this new beginning.

WPC — “Yellow”

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal

Tagged Christmas lights, Drought, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, rain, Red Bud, water, weather, weekly-photo-challenge, Winter Solstice

FOR FAMILY

Posted on December 20, 2014 by John | 3 comments

‘Traveling the same track
makes ruts when it rains,’
I tell myself, shoveling,

bringing future runoff back
to gutters and culverts
as if I might make a difference.

They hear me in their home
and come to the chainsaw’s whine
limbing a fallen tree on the fence—

old wire that can be spliced
and pulled up into place
only they will see, gathered

in rock piles above me
like Great Aunts, lifting
wet noses to a light breeze.

I left the house with salt
to see the cattle, check
the rain gauge, photograph

the grass ‘lest my memory slips
again and spins a yearning
into some other poem

for Winter Solstice 2014.
We are family, these cows
and calves, this wild about me

as I stack brush for quail
before I leave with Live Oak
limbs—come home with wood.

From dull light into the dark, we
will roast a rib between us warm
‘round our never-ending fire.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal

Tagged Calves, cows, Drought, family, Fire, Greasy Creek, photographs, poetry, rain, Spanish Flats, water, weather, wildlife

2014 CHRISTMAS LETTER TO ZARZYSKI

Posted on December 19, 2014 by John | 9 comments

Dear Paul, I’m not saying it’s over,
one never knows about the bigger picture,
but it’s rained and green and we got mud
instead of dust in the house for Christmas,
puddles in the garden. We learned a lot—
this blessing of basics disguised as disaster
made us tough, cold and calloused
as we tried to grin the bear down,
make friends with our dry realities.
(We’ll never run the ranch the same.)
I can write you now with more
than more bad news to add
to your rants to the outside world—

                      O’ Humanity, look
                     what we’ve become:
                      slaughtering children in school,
                      buckling under to cyber blackmail,
                      while Wall Street goes up over 400
                      and Congress smokes Cuban cigars.

We learned to retreat, keep our heads down
and ‘let them play’ as we searched for water,
fed cows to keep our future alive.
Are these not Jeffers’ ‘new values’,
the most basic this world has forgotten?

Hands-on people—we like the smell
of sweat, the sound of words and the feel
of accomplishment, day by day—it’s all
we have to share. Hoping to rekindle
our correspondence, I wish you, Liz
and Zeke some super-duper holidays.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

THE BLOODY SIRE

It is not bad. Let them play.
Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane
Speak his prodigious blasphemies.
It is not bad, it is high time,
Stark violence is still the sire of all the world’s values.

What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine
The fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk’s head?
Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values.

Who would remember Helen’s face
Lacking the terrible halo of spears?
Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar,
The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar?
Violence, the bloody sire of all the world’s values.

Never weep, let them play,
Old violence is not too old to beget new values.
-Robinson Jeffers