The cleaning lady
came to sweep the dust away
finally with rain.
Posted in Haiku 2016, Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged haiku, photography, poetry, rain, weather
Too few days of rain to save for,
anymore:
the special jobs on the list of extras
when too wet to get to anywhere
off the road and you choose jelly
while it pours. The pomegranate tree
I pruned too much bore fruit
with volunteers now big enough
to finish filling gallon jugs with crimson
juice pressed from a jillion seeds
and saved in the freezer, now thawed
waits for sugar and that special
pectin brought to a boil to fill these jars
of translucence sealed to give away
to family and friends for Christmas.
Who saves these things for rainy days?
for Robbin
Wind bangs against the mountains,
cold on warm rips and tears
cracks in air as crooked fingers
touch the ground with ‘lectric
yellow light to spark a roar
upon the metal roof in panting
pulses beneath soft gray
as if the gods were making love
in a bass drum, small canyon room
upstairs spawning muddy rivulets
towards a dry creek bed between
wet sycamores undressing
long white limbs suggestively
spilling November tans and browns
upon the green to stand naked
before an eager flow gathering
rafts of clothes upstream—
or as angry as the 60s
marching to make love
instead of war, or vice versa—
or with the best intentions
for all we’ve done today,
come to wash the dirty laundry,
our tracks and waste away.
1.81″ @ 7:30 a.m.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Dark morning without moon or stars
before the first winter storm, the day before
Black Friday rains deals and discounts
for Christmas, for our economy and I am
ever thankful that the bulls are out early
courting cows, meeting kids and family
before dirt roads get too slick to travel—
ever thankful for the drought that felled
two big Live Oaks on the gate and fence
we corded-up and stacked beneath the eave
before the girls drove posts and spliced
the barbed wire on a mat of green
to leave the mess looking like a park—ever
thankful for them, for you and this ground
we’re invested in together, for good horses
willing to get the cow work done—
black skies without moon or stars,
you and I alone before the storm.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged bulls, cows, Dry Creek, firewood, friends, photography, poetry, rain
…my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.
– Wendell Berry (“The Wish To Be Generous”)
Hemmed in silver moonlight, scattered
clouds linger over hills, no wet reflection
of the porch light. She has come and gone
without waking me with thunder, pellets
on the roof, not a leaky drip from the eave,
leaving nothing to remember her passing
by—not even her musty petrichor perfume
in the damp dark air to soothe my senses—
gone without a thought of waking me.
From a distance in the daylight, islands
of purple filaree look like dirt in graying
green, rolling dusty plumes follow cows
into water, yet they don’t seem to worry
into another winter without rain. Too
familiar, I read the signs with each synapse
shortened by the hard and dry. Too long
in the same place, I can see the weather
and the world have changed around me—
changed me as I retreat and try to adapt
like summer weed seed over time:
impervious to thirst and political herbicides.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016
Tagged Drought, photography, poetry, politics, rain, weather, Wendell Berry
It could be spring in November
waiting for a rain, yet we worry
about weather we can’t control—
complain to gods we have invented:
separate specialists leaving signs
we let tease and disappoint us
within the space we vest our lives.
But the Glory Hallelujah chorus
roars when it storms off every hillside,
pours down draws. Yet beneath dark sky
duals of thunderbolts, heavens at war,
we cherish our electric helplessness
and raise a glass to Gods all.
It could be spring in November, or
another religion for which we ride.
I turn away, blinded by November’s
first light, Redbud hearts enflamed
with last season’s feed on green
burning yellows between dark shadows
with the news, with disbelief.
I retreat to calm counsel with cattle:
scattered pairs, calves fresh with life
finding legs to fly—buck and run
figure-eights without direction always
circling back, showing off for mom.
We will work the heifers anyway—
give them everything we can
to make them attractive to Wagyu,
their first bulls. And we will wait,
as we always do, for rainy days.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016
Tagged Calves, cows, photography, poetry, politics, rain, weather
Within a week of late October rains, a forest
of green blades twisting, chasing warm
golden light between canyon horizons,
reaching while we sleep to a waxing moon
sailing south across black starlit seas—
a germination thick as hair on a dog’s back.
Hard clay turned soft underfoot, under cloven
hooves, out of the bleached and brittle rubble
of last year’s feed, a spreading miracle of green
as the earth stirs with another birth of grass.
And we are tied to it, mentally shackled
and physically restrained to work within her
moody generosity, daring not with word
or thought to piss her off—we have our gods
and goddesses we adore, stealing glimpses
every chance we get outside to pause
and praise them. All our totems, the bird
and animal people of the Yokuts know
our names, know our habits, show us the way
this canyon was designed to support life,
here and beyond us, with a crop of grass.
Weekly Photo Challenge: “Chaos”
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged birds, cattle, grass, photography, poetry, rain, water, weather, weekly-photo-challenge, wildlife, Yokuts
A dark day after over an inch of rain, Terri and Lee feed the replacement heifers before the Wagyu bulls arrive next month. Already dated, this photograph doesn’t show the green that has spread across the damp ground in the past three days. Temperatures forecast for the next ten days are in the mid-to-high-70s—perfect growing weather for our native grasses. Already, our first-calf heifers are leaving our flatter feeding grounds for the hillsides in search of green grass tall enough to bite, steep ground softer now to climb and graze a little dry feed with the new.
Shorter days stuck in the low-50s, chilly mornings linger as both man and beast seem slower to get started, much of the pressure off after four days of rain and a thick germination of seed. Robbin and I are already talking firewood after we check the cows and calves on the Paregien Ranch, a Kubota load to augment the leftovers of last year’s stack, kept short to discourage rattlesnakes around the house. We’re ready, I think, to face whatever weather we get this winter, hoping always for well-timed rains.
The seed beneath the dry, dead grasses
waits, as we have waited to begin again
with rain, to plant themselves, screw and twist
into damp dirt, to swell and burst—first
hands open to feed the living, applaud life,
millions of ovations standing on their own.
Each a miracle rising from hollow, blond
and brittle stems, from the dust of bare
red clay and sandy ground—alive and green.
Our private holiday, hope and relief let go
to breathe freely, to work fully within
this new beginning for one more poem.