DRY CRIK Journal

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Agents and Brokers - real estate and ranches for sale in the Sierras.
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Between Moses and Mt. Dennison,
the floods run around a steep island thrust
            into a channel of cobbles
where granite sand meets native clay -
            a squaw dust loam
between granite slabs of gossip rocks below.
New holes now drilled
are filled with red wine rootstock,
hairy-bottomed canewood added to water,
            then padded and smoothed
            into a muddy midden
            worn like gloves to the wrists
            on soft white hands of friends -
                        a festive planting party
                        hearts from all over bent
                        genuflecting in the dirt.
With my own glass, I am drunk with it.
My first vision is a movie flawed
            by vines burning alive
yet I can feel its gossamer walk in clouds
work here
in tomorrow’s gnarled vine rows cloaked
in this gray overcast
I skip and dance nearly naked
            with full breasts,
nipples tight against the night
            downcanyon draft
that lifts and exposes my long legs
            and a moonlit patch
            of a woman in me.

            In this soil, another uprising
            peppered with dried native blood -
                        the last battle pitched
            for a pocket of renegades.
            I see lines of blue coats from Ft. Tejon
            horse drawn caissons
            their cannons blasting holes
            that mythologize this mountain.
I sip and spill wine on this same ground
you plant - overhear you say,
“This is the holiest of days.”

                                    - for Dagny Grant

First published in the sparsely circulated chapbook With What Is (1997), and also included in Poems From Dry Creek (2008).