Tag Archives: weather

DAY’S WORK SONG

Posted on March 18, 2015 by | 1 comment

 

Pretty Face, Triteleia ixioides - April 11, 2014

Pretty Face, Triteleia ixioides – April 11, 2014

 

Steep east slope damp,
tall green grass slick,
pale Pretty Faces hold their grins
beneath Buckeyes and Live Oaks—

                    heavy thatch of fallen limbs
                    holds the old fence down,
                    shelters a rat’s nest.

Nature has been winning
since I was here last
with the chain saw,
packing posts afoot
and splicing rusty wire
to keep cattle straight—
pretending to be in charge.

I see my mark: old cuts
with decomposing rings.
                    Not near as near
                    as in my mind—
four years since the low snows,
ten more for this six-inch growth.

Steep east slope damp,
tall green grass slick,
pale Pretty Faces hold their grins
beneath Buckeyes and Live Oaks.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

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FEAST IN THE FIDDLENECK

Posted on March 17, 2015 by | 10 comments

 

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Beneath the blankets
of fuzzy bloom, arms and legs
serve dinner for two.

 

 

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Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs, Poems 2015

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RAISONS D’ÊTRE

Posted on March 16, 2015 by | 6 comments

 

                                       Now in the quiet I stand
                                       and look at her a long time, glad
                                       to have recovered what is lost
                                       in the exchange of something for money.
                                            – Wendell Berry (“The Sorrel Filly”)

Looming closer, a swirling darkness just beyond
the thought of summer’s water that is not
frozen deep in the Sierras to feed our rivers

and canyon leaks—of brittle fall and cattle
gathered at an empty trough. The creek dries back
and sinks in March, lifted to new canopies

of sycamores dressing. Skeletons of old oaks
stand out between greening survivors, some
wearing only clumps of yellow mistletoe

hanging like reasons, raisons—like raisins
clinging to a leafless vine. Each season
spins the same dry song, yet we find our place,

harmonize and sing along, lifted like precious
moisture to tender leaves, a basic ascension not
available in the big box stores, unrecorded

in the history of our presence. This may be
the new normal for old people—that daze
of amazement we have been working towards.

 

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Posted in Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

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NOT YET SPRING, 2015

Posted on March 14, 2015 by | 12 comments

 

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Leftover cedar
logs from the house
twenty-five years ago
                                          paid for
frame a loamy mix
of decomposing granite and clay
            with horse manure
            stirred and piled
            fine as sand
            three years fluffed
            with the skid steer
and fill what could be
a feeder along the fence—
a sixty-foot trough
for bare root raspberries
blackberries
border of red onions
come summer
and it not yet spring.

Like finches building nests
we enlarge the garden
in two half-days,
tend to instincts
warm air brings
and flesh demands
like plowing fingers
in fresh-worked dirt.

We lift another glass
and see colored fruit
years from here
                                          paid-for.

 

 

WPC — “Wall”

 

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LAYERS OF DIRT

Posted on March 13, 2015 by | Leave a comment

 

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This ground recovers our presence
with leaves and weeds, most all
of our mistakes erode with flowers,
explode with colors leaving seed

as accomplishment sags like ridgelines
of old barns and brittle wire between
broken posts as we sink satisfied
into the soil rich with the work

of hands. Calloused hands, hands
a horseback that track our thoughts
when we were green and learning
to see and think the hard way.

As we breathe, all the chiseled chins
of the rough and gruff retreat
to live as monuments in rock piles
with the honesty of rattlesnakes—

an immortality stirred into the earth
that can’t be purchased, but is always
upon always like the layers of dirt
our future depends, rooted within.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015

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TIME TO LOVE

Posted on March 12, 2015 by | 4 comments

 

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                                                                                                    Gail Steiger

 

Two months from Elko
busy branding calves,
begging for rain and grass,

we listen under an empty
overcast to “A Matter
of Believin’” as if Gail

were here with 100 years
of ranching lessons
in poetry and song.

South slopes all but done,
thin feed gray on clay
showing again,

it’s time to love
this short spring
wrapped in wildflowers

with our old friend
and glass of wine—
the whole show

mostly behind us now,
we indulge ourselves,
embrace the storms

of good fortune
we have worn well—
believing and trusting,

adapting like cattle
to these same hills
just harvesting grass.

 

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PLACE

Posted on March 11, 2015 by | 1 comment

 

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Close to coffee and cigarette,
I could be anywhere—
my tiny light lost
in night’s black sea.

Come dawn, she takes shape
to locate me beneath her
supine silhouette of ridges
rising, breathing like always.

 

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TIME CHANGE

Posted on March 9, 2015 by | 9 comments

 

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Early yet in an early spring,
growing patches, orange-gold,
claim open slopes like flames,

Fiddleneck between gray skeletons
of Blue Oaks pushing bud,
feathery translucent leaves

where the gods walk ridges,
wave hands to paint,
adding color to hillside green

we’ve not seen tall in years.
Out of dust and naked dirt,
new mosaics, lush with moments,

openings for everything put off
in drouth—real work we absorb,
take our sweet time to recognize.

 

 

WPC(2) — “Orange”

 

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ON GREEN, ON GRAY

Posted on March 5, 2015 by | 13 comments

 

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Haven’t wondered about Heaven
since Sunday school’s cold
pearly gates and alabaster walls

seemed drab by comparison,
and the blinding shine of silver
and gold eternities much too bright

even for the pure. Out of dust
and dirt we rise, generations
personified in living colors.

We need not preach poetry
or pray for more than what’s
before us full with awe—

small enough to see through
purple stems of Wild Hyacinth
on green, on gray—I believe.

 

 

WPC(3) — “Reward”

 

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RAIN IN THE GROUND

Posted on March 3, 2015 by | 5 comments

 

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Perfect for early bloomers,
Fiddleneck, White-veined Mallow,
London Rockets pale the pasture.

Rain in the ground, thick Filaree
overreaches like loose-fringed
lettuce for more—more of the same.

Grass ahead of the cattle, it’s war—
every seed battling for real estate,
real dirt damp, for sun and rain,

green hills puddled with spilt paint.
Everything perfect on it’s own, yet
I fret with the brittle momentum

of lean, dry years—months of dust
and hay—a hard pace that interferes
with becoming forgiving as this ground

exploding in all the colors of rain.
Desperately, I reach through
early morning black for light.

 

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