Talking bombs,
fast-draw uranium enriched
nuclear bullets, missiles aimed
at predetermined targets—
like the enemy’s essentials:
water, electric
and transportation grid
poisoned and petrified—
and who’s got the best,
them or us? Fighter jets
or drones, B-2s
or attack subs,
who can blow the biggest hole
in the planet? Who can drive
the herd of humans
over the cliff of reason first
into the flames
of Armageddon,
barbecued and
swallowed whole.
Dawn near the Solstice, shadows
seem to shrink in the same places
on the hillsides where cattle graze
towards midday shade, oblivious
to the hackneyed news of war
‘to end all wars’ my whole lifetime
promising everlasting peace—
one way or another now
on the cusp of my reward.
Pale ribbon of dawn—
war fears rise
as somewhere east of here
helter-skelter backroom maneuvers
make knights of pawns.
One more war to end all wars
hangs in the heavens—
one more barren planet
to explore
when your work is done.
Perhaps a better day awaits,
a better way to stifle the narcissistic
egos bent on power, born of greed.
But it must trickle to truly flourish
from the bare ground up.
Blessed are the meek
for they shall inherit the earth.
– Matthew 5.5
Posted in Poems 2025, poetry
Tagged Beatitudes, Jonathon Swift, meek, poetry, trickle down, trickle up, war
Occasionally, I feel guilty.
I’ve killed so many
that I may allow
one to escape
my will to kill
before becoming numb
as machinery,
before squeezing
the pellet gun
the .22,
the .223
or the 17 HMR—
…like now as I write:
one breaking from
the dogs’ empty pens
with cheeks full
of puppy chow.
Little bastards,
I’ve fed tens of thousands
to our local wake of buzzards
waiting for the first report
of war in the canyon.
Falling off hillsides in hordes,
battalions of vermin
to strip tomatoes
green from the vine—
every sweet and juicy issue
from my darling Elberta,
our plump grapefruit
and leather-hided pomegranates
that will never spread
as jelly on toasted bread.
Serious business in a drought
to become an oasis
for the flea-infested
and their underpopulated
predators, but I’d like a day off.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged buzzards, gardens, ground squirrels, guilt, killing, orchards, vermin, war
Now that I can see beyond the dust
and dead oaks crumbling, begging
for some purpose yet as cordwood—
now that I can breathe, inhale wet,
clear channels to broaden my senses,
taste and smell the green air stick
to my thirty flesh with these rains,
I can think about this distant planet
and its people we are lost among,
the overlap of corporate nations
profiting from wars—projects to busy
and worry a populace to pharmacies—
I feel no less helpless, no less
inconsequential than a fly
trapped in a barn of spider webs.
And they establish foundations and give
some of the money back.
– William Stafford (“Men”)
No pauses, anymore,
between wars.
No parades for heroes
stopping traffic
on Main Street—
no laurels for generals
to rest upon
when there are no ends—
just justified beginnings.
War is commonplace
like mountains in the distance
no one looks up to see,
too far from more
pressing matters
to consider unusual.
No longer children
chasing rainbows,
we want to believe
the drought is over—
look to the mountains
to shield our souls
from insistent cities
and a world at war.
Like native Yokuts
we want to believe
the ground can hold us
before we leave.
~
A trace of rain up-canyon yesterday afternoon as I looked up from my desk, inside after an 1.5” of rain, sorting poetry for another collection—working title: “The Best of the Dry Years”, 2013, 2014, 2015. A formidable task, like sorting 90 head from 900, it will take many more rainy days to complete.
The photo has that postcard-look of not quite real, a reminder of what a little rain can bring. Yet, I harbor some skepticism, not ready to say the drought is over, to set ourselves up for disappointment. But it sure feels good, nonetheless.
Weekly Photo Challenge(3): “Treat”
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged cities, rain, rainbow, sustainability, war, weather, weekly-photo-challenge, Yokuts
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.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged "The Bloody Sire", birds, Drought, evolution, Hereford Bull, photographs, poetry, Robinson Jeffers, values, Violence, war, wildlife
Wherever we looked the land would hold us up.
– William Stafford (“One Home”)
We have come back to rest upon the rock
we couldn’t move out of our heads—
you riding barefoot on a Kentucky
mule to town before I was born
to land here, young. He raised us both
after the war that forever changed him,
and us—all of us close, and those close to us.
I tie those times to the underwater look
in old Mort’s eyes understanding more
than his bib-overalls could handle. Doc
Sweeney was no doctor, but said it best—
“He didn’t come back the same.”
Slow to move now, we never weakened—
grateful for the gravity that holds us up
to gather tough country in our sleep.
Posted in Poems 2014
Tagged "One Home", poetry, PTSD, war, William Stafford, World War II
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