Highwater debris,
enough to measure peak flow
gauging stations miss.
We’ve begun naming creeks
that flood the dry draws,
pull nominees from our histories
while exchanging guffaws.
We have become the helpless
prisoners of the weather,
of flatland floods and saturated mud,
resisting cabin fever.
Roads and fences, trees to cut,
our work comes to a halt—
no need to fuss, cows don’t need us
with water, grass and salt.
Posted in Haiku 2023, Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged cabin fever, Dry Creek, flood water, haiku, helpless, humility, mud, photography, poetry, rain, runoff, water, weather
RIBBON OF ROAD
Not the least hurt by this ribbon of road carved on their sea-foot.
– Robinson Jeffers (“The Coast-Road”)
Fridays bring the caravans of Christians,
SUVs freeway-spaced and paced at sixty
up this snaky road to the pines and cedars
to pray
and low-snow weekends, the growl of mud grips
on decomposing asphalt, armies of colored jeeps
and shiny four-wheel drives drone up-canyon
to play
do not see these hills leaking with pleasure,
every wrinkle running with crystal streams
of rain, three weeks of storms rushing to
a rising, chocolate creek with foam, nor
the naked sycamores, leaves undressed,
white limbs dancing, rosy fingers reaching
for steamy clouds afloat upon the green
oak-studded slopes, black dots of cattle
scattered with all the legends gone before me.
Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023
Tagged Dry Creek, Dry Creek Road, encroachment, photography, play and pray, poetry, rain, runoff, sycamores, weather
Gray canyon rain,
café au lait rivulets
overfill vernal pools
spreading to the creek
just begun to run
at the end of December.
She stayed overnight
and all day, lingering
to leave us extra rain,
as if we were old lovers
trying to give the past
a second chance—
she offers nourishment
to thirsty earth, bare slopes
a cover of color come spring:
a team of sunlit Wood Ducks
at the edges of water pooled
grazing with horses.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, photography, poetry, rain, runoff, vernal pools, water, weather, Wood Ducks
After the first inch rain
I work the road
with big Cat loader tires—
three towed behind
four wheel drive
low range crawl
smoothing ruts
like icing a cake
keeping gutters clean
and runoff into draws.
Outside, inside
down the middle
two round trips
four miles clay, rock
and some d.g.—
plenty time to think
and look for life:
quail, hawk
deer and bear,
somewhere cattle
this fresh day.
Through the open window
scent of milk and cud
in the flats—
little bunch:
cows and calves
upwind.
I’ve grown wild
since college and the Sixties:
hauling hay loads up,
goosenecks gathered
with fat calves down
the mountain—
our dirt road lifeline.
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