Tag Archives: wildlife

AMERICAN WIDGEON

Posted on November 13, 2014 by John | 14 comments

Carnival colors
reflected on a breeze—
Disneyland for a duck.

14 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014

Tagged American Widgeon, birds, Dry Creek, haiku, photographs, poetry, water, weather, wildlife

DEEDS OF TRUST

Posted on November 6, 2014 by John | 2 comments

When the earth can be worked, they come
to investigate. Horses peer over fences,
cattle stare through barbed wire, but

the Roadrunners come in pairs like cops
on patrol inspecting changes to the ground
they claim, including us, without fear.

The quail fall out of the Live Oaks
well after dawn, tittering like children
late for school, gray coveys rolling

off the hill to graze new ways
to the water trough, and we claim them
all like family, one that gets along—

a sense of belonging greater
than ownership, taken root and proven
to be more than enough to feel secure.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014

Tagged birds, Dry Creek, garden, Home, photographs, poetry, quail, water, wildlife

AWAKENING

Posted on November 2, 2014 by John | 8 comments

Day and night comes much the same
as an evening of time—not ticked,
but slurred one word into the next

like a soloist might his octaves
into prolonged song. Soft and low
at first, a rumbling from a dusty

cave of lungs, a subtle clearing
of the passageways for all things
since the common miracle of rain.

Well-short of whole, she learns
to breathe again, her heartbeat sure
awakens color deep within her flesh

for the moment, and then the next
until she’s fit for more natural activities,
more normal rules for mortals to abide

in her simple service and generosity.
It’s an old tune we have forgotten,
a harkening of high notes for sopranos

and baritones to blaze before us
as she awakens. Dark or light, her each
new breath is ours come back to life.

8 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014

Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, Paregien Ranch, photographs, poetry, rain, water, weather, wildlife

TARANTULA NEST

Posted on November 1, 2014 by John | 3 comments

Refurbished hole in the ground,
dark, deep and sticky—
but I just can’t fit.

WPC — “Descent”

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014

Tagged Greasy Creek, haiku, photographs, poetry, Tarantula, Tarantula Nest, weekly-photo-challenge, wildlife

CIRCLING THE HOUSE

Posted on October 29, 2014 by John | Leave a comment

Dogs bark into the early morning blackness,
up-canyon scent of something feline, half-bayed
young lion in the oaks to rock piles arched—etched

in their minds, they become a pack of oddities
standing-off coyotes, rousting coons from the garden,
escorting possums and skunks—we know their bark.

Your Beagle inheritance, inside fat, old and waddling,
following his nose to new frontiers beyond a life
on the couch, instincts fired to chase and bay

sharp claw or teeth he’s never dreamed before,
barks in his sleep—deep furrows in his derrière.
The dark stranger, jumpy, blockheaded Queensland

slinks and investigates the far water trough
every evening for smells—fell out of a cowboy
pickup and moved-in waiting to be found

likes his soft outside bed more than anything. Just
how they admire your Border Collie Jack-the-Good-Dog
keeps them lined-out circling the house.

Jack-the-Good-Dog

LEARNING TO LIVE IN TREES

Posted on October 28, 2014 by John | Leave a comment

                                When god visits us he sleeps
                                without a clock in empty bird nests.
                                      – Jim Harrison (“The Little Appearances of God”)

We give ourselves away
perhaps too generously
in poetry, leave bare

the tree, its cankered burls
we’ve grown to live with
season after shorter season

shedding pages
to a southwest wind
before the storm

leaves us clean
once more to dream
the winter long

of green—yearning for
pastoral perfection
between each heartbeat

of littered pages—
we give ourselves away
to open space, to all

the new and wild beginnings
we’ve yet to see
until we learn to live in trees.