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We squeezed a branding in, February 27th between showers.
Tom, John, Bob & Clarence
It’s supposed to be raining –
low spinning off the coast,
sucking southern moisture up
through thirsty California where
it’s been a perfect year
for grass in the foothills.
Yesterday’s soft horses groaning,
men bemoaning
the size of Frank Ainley’s calves.
Most understocked
with the price of hay –
white forget-me-nots
claim the lightly grazed
as poppies topping ridges
burn holes in green.
Low snow, slow rain
more days than not
saturating February
with little runoff,
a warm storm could
test reservoirs and prayers
for the Valley all week.
Daylight drizzles on tall
nettles in the garden, drips
upon the first brass trumpets
of an orchestra of fiddleneck
jamming corners of the orchard.
Horehound spreads each
persistent, pungent leaf
to gather moisture
in the pasture –
a man may need
to spray weeds more
than write poetry.
Perhaps not strictly a cultural phenomenon, but cattle and rural natives tend to complain, it seems, even in the light of plenty. No exception, I wonder if the negativity validates our activities as work, as an Anglo-Puritan stamp of approval. We come from stock that has had to tough it out, as many agricultural families continue to do – and many survive on guts and stoic toughness alone to become a model to perpetuate.
I dare say, it may work for awhile, but not indefinitely. Now after 20-some years of gathering to recite cowboy poetry, a few among us discuss how we were motivated to work when we were younger – many stories are far from pretty, and for the most part unnecessary unless we consider the value of getting beyond those attitudes and constraints. But we also know many good and often sensitive folks that folded under that kind of pressure, people that may have otherwise excelled. Too often, however, the real issue becomes economic.
The other side of the luxury of work is satisfaction. Learning to plan, enjoying each step of the process and allowing appropriate basking in the finished product, depending on the details that need to be improved. Pound and Snyder’s ‘pattern is not far off’. I am still learning, different season after different season – the poetry not far off.
AXE HANDLES
One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet.
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet-head
And working hatchet, to the wood block.
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
“When making an axe handle
the pattern is not far off.”
And I say to Kai
“Look: we’ll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with — ”
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It’s in LuJi’s W’en Fu, fourth century
A.D. “Essay on Literature” —in the
Preface: “In making the handle
Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand.”
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft and culture,
How we go on.
- Gary Snyder
from “Axe Handles” (North Point Press, 1983.)
Whoever bought you this teapot
(and I know you did not buy it
for yourself, perfect Japanese china)
leafy white poppies lying
against an aqua background
bound by bands of navy,
white waves and blossoms
dancing around its circumference
knew elegance. It sits
on my decrepit white stove
gleaming
waiting for tomorrow’s tea
and I want to talk to you
about disillusionment
in a way we’d never been
able to do in real life
and yet I hear your voice.
“Oh, girl,” you say
launching some story from
your own time. And
it’s always the right story, some
somebodydonesomebodywrongsong
that sets the stage for acceptance
and moving on. Here we are
the teapot empty, waiting
for tomorrow’s conversation.
- Trudy Wischemann
E. J. told the story
how he had cowboys ease
cows around the mountain
several times to please
the banker parked below
with that grin that had been there
several times, his eye a twinkling.
Cattle scattered to the steep
brush and rock, you had to call
them out of Greasy – cows, calves
and yearlings boiling out of canyons
– his announcement rung
with prolonged octaves rolling upwards
into unending echoes
where the poppies on Sulphur
cut into the deep blue.
Being there with Earl was too spiritual
for numbers, for young appraisers
to even remember
where in the hell they were.
Dad told the story
how Cal went broke farming in Exeter
in the 30s – then went to the bank
to manage their foreclosures
– learned the best ground and got it
to pay it’s way into a real estate
business.
It’s no secret: banks have no friends,
nor any real expertise to get a job done –
and now that they’ve leant
what they didn’t have,
damn little sympathy once again.
for Jerry
New pickup, shiny clean, pulls into the yard
No hay stacked three tiers high
No jumper cables or fix-it-all tool box
or handyman jack
or wads of bailing wire
or cans of staples
or hammer with pipe handle welded on
or fork or shovel
or pile of rusted chains
No 30.30 resting between dining-out coyotes
No old dog on the seat along for the ride.
A new pickup with three men inside
shoulder to shoulder
stiff clothes with ironed creases
stiff faces with importance.
Walking out to meet them
a man in worn clothes that know sweat, not starch
rough hand
that sends a loop surely
pulls a colt sweetly
seals a deal
changes a wheel
and bleeds
is extended politely
to men
who won’t meet his eyes.
Inside, the woman
sets out cream and sugar and cups of coffee
as if in welcome.
- Linda Hussa
Where the Wind Lives, Gibbs Smith Publishers, 1994
…. a lot of little seedlings sprout
around it –
- Gary Snyder (“Among”)
A hundred acorns swell,
forty-more clumped
in a pocket gopher’s
pantry full to rise above
the grass – root down
quickly in the shade.
Every year they die by July,
but once, a hundred years ago
or so, the north slopes sprouted
beneath the old ones, grew up
thick as hair on a dog’s back.
A hundred stories start,
forty-more wander off
into the brush and rock.
A hundred years ago or so,
the flats were overrun
with poems from the old ones –
and from the granite slabs
a woman’s song, smooth
as a canyon wren’s shrill:
CALLING - Calling, calling call.
I tried to describe this excited mindset shared by those engrained in place, those people connected for decades to a piece of ground within a watershed, in my poem “Cowboy Capitualtion”. Perhaps a love for the uncontrollable, return of the prodigal lover and all the wild and sensual implications that overwhelm us in a miserable downpour and flood, or having the confidence in self and community to meet whatever challenge such disasters bring, but I dare say the air in this canyon at daylight is electric with that kind of excitement – not because of any impending or predicted weather event, but simply because our weather has changed.
It is simple. We make our living from the renewable resource of grass – and plenty rain means plenty feed. If it’s pretty with wildflowers, hills dressed in golden poppies above white skiffs of forget-me-nots, an awe inspiring quilt spilt with blue lupine, magentas, purples and pinks usurping the green, so much the better. It’s damn-near Spring!
Sometimes we howl like coyotes,
let our yippee-ti-yi-yos go
to God knows where
just to let every living thing out-there know
we own the space they can’t look after
with rules and paper credentials –
everything “cowboy”
that makes you uneasy.
For our unobserved holiday,
we pray for floods
to clear the channels,
to take-out bridges
and back the builders off one more time –
as we rosin-up our bows,
fire-up the dozers and 4-wheel drives
to help our neighbors out
of whatever sink hole
Ma Nature’s delivered
and we like it – we like these
Pyrrhic victories, these wild
extremes that we believe
are the ultimate
truth – our proof of purpose
amid the chaos when
convenience breaks down
to who can lend
a helping hand to whom.
("Poems from Dry Creek")
WRITER IN RESIDENCE
Words come like cattle into hay
from over the hill, out of the blue
chemise and manzanita drawn
down the length of dusty backs
almost always glad to see me.
Good alfalfa helps, but a man
moves among them like dancing,
locates his grace with deliberate steps
in bovine time, and he speaks
endearingly, a familiar voice
as they find comfort in a line.
When they are hungry,
I write like Bukowski, a frenzied
stampede bucking and kicking
the hard truth loose, words
that can hurt when they connect –
seldom safe to walk among
until the feeding’s done.
Visiting their feral households,
they are mostly curious –
bringing calves and checking-in
to see what I’m about.
for Joel & Gail
Up the steep stairs
she rears back and pulls
the harp’s neck to her
like a bareback rider’s
deep seat
between her legs
before the nod.
She craves it –
flying fingered wings
plucking strings, spurring
Gaelic words that stir
the flesh. They are one –
her mane shook loose,
head thrown back in ecstasy,
she sings to the ceiling –
to heavens beyond
with brazen abandon
and we are moved
to a worn out bed
to make love.
for Keri Lynn
It’s been delightful being home, gradually recuperating and catching-up from a week in Elko. The weather there, and here as well, has been spring-like – as the grass gets ahead of the cattle.
We left the 25th exhilarated, though not exhausted despite late hours kept at the Stray Dog with Mike Beck or Corb Lund at the Pioneer – never saw so many flat hats in one place dancing – or Anne Rapp and Ray Benson's spectacular musical with Asleep at the Wheel, a tribute to Bob Wills, "A Ride with Bob", or at the Stockman’s upstairs with David, Joe, Keri Lynn, Nathan (Cowboy Celtic) and MMM’s fiddle player David Davidson: what a treat!
With more diverse programming than ever, I offer our appreciation and gratitude to the WFC staff and sponsors for making it all happen! In these uncertain times when rural values and ethics will continue to serve us well, we ought to hedge our future bets by helping to preserve them with a membership, or increasing our level of membership to the Western Folklife Center. Looking back twenty-some years at the resurgence of cowboy poetry and music, as well as the other spectrums of artistic expression at Elko, it is truly quite magical and remarkable what has been accomplished – testifying, I think, to a need and an audience. Ours is a dynamic culture yet, so please join and donate!!
A trace of moisture yesterday morning as the predicted rain split north and south around us, but a second disturbance left .31” yesterday afternoon and evening. Unsettled weather slated through the weekend and into early next week.
Sulphur Ridge
"Poems from Dry Creek" has been selected 'Outstanding Poetry Book' for 2008 by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma!! Had to go to Sulphur today in the company of my son to cut a little manwood a) before the rains return and b) to get back down to earth. Thanks all for your support and encouragement.
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