Tag Archives: weekly-photo-challenge

VAPOR

 

March 14, 2014

 

Awakened slowly,
drinking promises of rain
with people on time.

 

 

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OLD DAYS

 

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She could have stayed
longer, spent the night
pelting the roof,
roaring like a river

over boulders, flashing
foothill silhouettes
to cracks of thunder
like in the old days.

 

 

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Wind Gust—Macro-Monday, Weekly-Photo-Challenge: “Blur”

 

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Easter on Dry Creek is normally green and verdant with skiffs of popcorn flowers and patches of poppies on the hillsides. A month ago, I hoped for a long spring and time to photograph this year’s wildflowers with an eye for their expression as life forms, the evolved complexities of each species’ pollination structure, background lines and colors, etc., etc., but Robbin and I have spent the last three days preparing and planting our summer garden instead. C’est la vie!

 

 

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WPC — Leavin’

 

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GOOD WORK HABITS

 

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I never see her leave
the loose nest of twigs
behind the cactus spines—

long tail feathers up,
eye to the outside perched
a week or more

near the water trough
while he patrols barn
and pasture, garden, yard.

The car’s shiny wheels
spend the night in the shop—
polished aluminum spokes

reflecting distortions
between each beak attack
gone from their spot

and he is confused and lost
without purpose,
without a job at dawn

searching in circles
for the foe
who drew no blood.

 

 

wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/blur/

 

AFTER RAIN 2

 

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Dawn’s soft light steaming,
rain’s last embrace still clinging,
love spent overnight.

 

 

photo_challenge/ephemeral

Fresh Calf

September 5, 2012

September 5, 2012

 

We calve in the fall and brand in the spring. As newborns go, this calf is fresh, only minutes old and yet to stand and nurse. Robbin and I are off this morning to help our neighbors, Kenny and Virginia McKee, brand the last of their calves.

 

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/fresh-2/

 

NOT YET SPRING, 2015

 

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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”

 

TIME CHANGE

 

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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”

 

NARANJA

 

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Beginning to end,
tender loins and fruit on fire
finding Nirvana.

 

 

WPC(1) — “Orange”