DRY CRIK Journal

Black silence broken only by barn lights
as amber holes in the chilly darkness,
fuzzy flames and proof of humans

out there, otherwise in my world
of animals: the bear foot, toes twisting
in the dust below cows calving,

oaks undressed for acorns, limbs scattered
like dirty clothes on the way to water
beneath real clouds out of the north,

the smell of moisture, sudden gusts,
the feel of rain. Each turn a story:
Bill Greasy’s homestead below the figs

where the creek stops summer in the draw -
all the dead men locked in his head
set free by landmarks along the way

in his place, his flesh and history. Slim,
Snap, Sam, all the dogs barking
in his dreams – the sorrel horse and King

remembered together. Below the dirty
highwater ring before the dam, where
his Dad bucked off in ’46, slammed

headfirst into the bank, died two weeks
later in the high country at Marion Lake
where my father and I in 1958

propped fly rod cases beneath our ponchos
for an all-night Sierra thunderstorm –
caught more big fish than we could eat.

It’s how we’re related, all the old names
when people were few, plaited characters
from tough landscapes that haven’t changed.

                                       - for Earl McKee

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I grope in the shadows, run my hand
along the familiar and feel the soft
moss on forgotten piles of granite.

Surely a thread of grace appears
here in the half-light, illuminated
between the stone-cold dead

and the musty smell of living –
surely there is some solace
missed by the genius of science

in these scattered, fractured ruins
where I may rest my head and relax.
Off in the valley, bright head and

red tail lights stream urgently
to the churning wind above me,
the wings of ravens returning

from the fields, a squadron strung
high for miles to the oak trees
beyond the ridgelines we never see.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Darkness sneaks-up outside to surround the house
engulfing the pasture of Angus heifers with fresh
black calves curled beside them, merging oaks

and sycamores along the creek with sculpted ridges
flexed and thrusting the spearhead of Sulphur
towards a rusty bucket sky leaking promises of light.

But in between, Cerebus waits and watches
with underworld hobgoblins picking their teeth
with redwood posts and flossing with barbed wire

while we say our prayers. Somewhere in the blackness
south, a climax of coyote yips is answered north,
here and there, then closer west to work the canyon

into a frenzy spilling fear into every crack of logic.
No one knows what’s out there! – what dark forces
scramble from out of the bowels of Hades.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This place, this planet, its people -
we are here, each in our own minds
busy, each so occupied
we have forgotten why.

It is a game, you know
and the big kids on the playground
pick their teams
and make the rules to win.

We think we know what winning is,
what it means to have
almost everything
new and fresh at our fingertips.

We have won so much
that we have forgotten
how to make things work,
how to fix the broken,

how to care for what we have -
especially our old ones.
We are here – each so occupied
we have forgotten why.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The sweet smell of a fall shower, usually immeasurable, the sound of it on the barn roof this morning feeding horses under light gray clouds against a brisk breeze reaffirms life – but perhaps more importantly, that we’re alive.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Old trees, dry years, capsize –
lose their leaves and lie down
in a pillow of hollow limbs

like people on a crowded
hillside. No one notices
the squirrels move in

with ants and scorpions
rejoicing, with small birds
working the loose bark –

hawks above, snakes below
an old stump. Like literature,
they feed on it awhile

until it disappears, until
the earth digests it, until
the seedling it shaded shines!

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

http://www.coffmanranchgathering.webs.com

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 2:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Somewhere a whistle blows, a bell tolls
for someone, a clock strikes a chord
for mankind, but ticks like a bomb.

All but Sundays, the siren sounds
at noon in Exeter, you could hear it
in the vine rows when I was a boy

swamping grape lugs to the avenue
for lidding and stacking on the wagon
bound for the shed and cold storage waiting

for an order from the East Coast.
Last word, the distant siren was final
in a field of poor pocket watches.

Dry grape cane from past year’s
pruning made a fine sundial in the dust –
kids had no need for watches then.

I think I was twelve that first summer
I escaped weeding my mother’s garden
for two-bits an hour, strode with men

for four bits more – big money, big plans
banked in my mind, running with loose
details of what I overheard from work.

It’s how we learned, listening to the
tempo of words, to the rat-tat-tat
of the lidding hammer’s chatter, then

from deep within the steamy vineyard,
someone’s solo becoming chorus
as the sun bore down on us all.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

                           ….so long as we search
                           for something so faint most people
                           won’t know, even when it is found.
                                   - William Stafford (“Deep Light”)

A poet’s credo, a rancher’s romance,
unearthing details overlooked
in darkness and overwhelmed by days.

Black Widow between the bales, two
soft white eggs in web like moons
above the long scattered feathers

of a racing pigeon lost off course,
tired and thirsty, where the coyote
pup retreated one morning last month.

Flat top of the stack, barn owl pellets,
dark woven bones of mice and bats,
a raven’s nest of twigs in the rafters,

walnut shells and empty orange rinds
from the orchards miles away.
Fresh green tunnels gnawed

in the bottom bales over gopher
homes still under construction
where stink bugs congregate exposed.

Ground squirrels playing on patrol
for rattlesnakes awake beneath
the pole barn along the road.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

                    ….those years now lost, that were true.
                               - William Stafford (“You Forget”)

Even though California’s candle burns at both ends,
north and south, the air is clean and crisp between
hungry, man-eating flames – feeding tight tornados

of hellfire, leaping infernos connecting black ash
to smoke-laden heavens – it is clear from here
to the granite Kaweahs and the near shadows

of leather-leafed blue oaks falling long and dark
down blond hillsides. You would not know that
there were wars, or any frenzied men in yellow

Nomex stretched along dry skirmish lines,
or young men dressed in desert camo pitched
a long ways from home. You could not know it

from wind or weather unexplained, nor from
the heifers just becoming mothers, finding
babies behind them for the first time, nor from

the coyotes walking among them like scruffy
town dogs on official business. “Those were
the days,” I’d say, when faces came more quickly –

comrades in love, in lust with the wild and
unexpected shared that seems more like distant
dreams we lived and somehow survived

to now forget. But on days like this, a face
will come calling from out of the tree shadows,
through the gray veil to remind me, to replay

a detailed scene before my rewrite – and
I wonder which were true while off the coast
of Baja, a fresh hurricane spins this way.

                                             - for Jimena

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)