Tag Archives: war

SERIOUS BUSINESS

Posted on August 30, 2022 by John | Leave a comment

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.

SPIDER WEBS

Posted on December 14, 2015 by John | Leave a comment

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.

WHEN WAR IS PEACE

Posted on December 13, 2015 by John | 2 comments

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.

2 Comments

Posted in Poems 2015

Tagged peace, war

POT OF GOLD

Posted on November 5, 2015 by John | 9 comments

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”

9 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

Tagged cities, rain, rainbow, sustainability, war, weather, weekly-photo-challenge, Yokuts

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.