Tag Archives: writing

Sea Chest Oyster Bar

Whether poetry or prose, it’s been difficult to post to the blog under the current political atmosphere of chaos and confusion that has become addicting for those of us who are still hoping to ferret out the truth. Though adding to the whole mess with more political poems is difficult to resist, with few facts, they are seldom enlightening. Like so many other people, we’ve not only sought ways to wean ourselves from the “latest”, but celebrate the positive with the many uplifting alternatives that surround us, reminders of the joy and grace that plays out before our eyes if we keep them open.

We shipped our last load of calves in the middle of May, and since selected our replacement heifers that will get their Brucellosis vaccinations on Wednesday. We will start supplementing them and our 1st and 2nd calf heifers soon thereafter as we prepare them to calve in September. Our carrot has been the 50th Anniversary of the Sea Chest Oyster Bar in Cambria (70 degrees). A month long celebration, we were in attendance for a couple of enjoyable nights.

Back home to 100+ degrees:

The distant hawk’s bare branch at dawn
awaits fuzzy-headed movement
to fall like an arrow fledged with patience.

The sun crawls across the flats
without a sound, wild oats bent
like blond hair combed into the light.

Shadows stretch beneath hillside oaks
into the puddled creek where an egret
goes fishing before breakfast.

MY DROUGHT





           a gusher of poems
that poured out of the house
on Highland Street
and watered the town

- Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel (“The Gusher”)


They fall from the sky
like hawks at play
and dive into our poetry,

perfect words
we cannot claim, but do—
to hunt the periphery

for a place to light
to transform a poem
into something better.

I am reading Wilma
in Tulare next Saturday—
revisiting her real Okie poetry,

searching for the one
that breaks my drought
into a flood of verses,

a gusher of poems
that poured out of the house
on Highland Street
and watered the town






PERSPECTIVE

 

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There is no blank sheet—
no white, unblemished page
on which to letter words
together, even in the highlands.

Once when I was there in awe
and almost nothing, irrelevant
but to breathe and drink from streams
of melting snow off peaks

like granite teeth sunk into the blue,
blue sky, lost in my insignificance—
the paper I carried from the world
below was smudged and dirty.

So it is with we humans, never free,
never clean enough to pen
the perfect words without shadows,
without darkness leaking starlight.

 

BEFORE SOLSTICE

 

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Outside, early summer heat stifles
the mind, bakes a hard crust
upon the brain beneath straw lids—

eyes roll and detach within flashes
of white light, falling towards delirium:
I cannot breathe or see connections,

I cannot think, I cannot write.
Small comfort that I am not alone
within this fuzzy circumstance.

Harassed by a squadron kingbirds,
a Great Blue glides and lights
upon the gravel, stands tall

to claim any open space,
grounded for battle. All supposed
sentiments have escaped to shade,

gone north to cooler climes.
Summer in the San Joaquin,
a damn hard time to write.

 

LET THEM GO

 

What comes of words planted
from a poor harvest
but strong seed to root between

the cracks of rocks gathering
every bit of rain to fruit
again and again. Listen

to the defiant sound they make:
a crop of clashing cymbals
before they die and blow away

to a better place.
An iffy eternity at best,
but let them go, anyway.

 

BEFORE CHRISTMAS 2014

Sulphur - December 11, 2014

Sulphur – December 11, 2014

 

No father or mother left to leave
a Christmas gift under the tree—
even the child in us understands.

An ever-ready substitute, the old
Hereford bull plods along the fence
looking past the asphalt, gutturally

conversing with the neighbor’s
registered Angus mothers
while his younger brethren work

the steep brush and rock,
gather families in the wild
from last year’s seed.

Kept another year, just in case
someone gets hurt, we become
the extras for the gods—

walk the sidelines
lending words to the old songs
‘lest the world forgets

the melodies of Christmas
when it rains, or snows low
leaving only grass under trees.