DRY CRIK Journal

Loren’s story of colored horses, the great plume
of dust rising into the sky as they descended
from Buckeye – the same high ridge and deep

drop into the flat along the Kaweah that Dad & I
kicked cattle off each June – I could see it
in his eyes from the hillside across the canyon.

Bays, sorrels and duns bumping, leaping downwards,
single file – Fred Ward’s gather for the cavalry
strung for half-a-mile. It happened then, he said,

when he wanted to be a cowboy. Gills, Salinas,
Arizona rodeos, knotted tail of a paint horse
disappearing with the crack of manzanita,

forsaking the bunch for a wild one – working best
on his own. Old and cranky, put his pocket knife
to Leroy’s throat for riding in front of him

on the Roble Lomas. You could see dying
come back to life in his brown eyes, a sudden
damp reflection riding up the creek to Ishom

atop a wagon full of carp dried upon the rocks
at Belle Point. We shared it gently, heard
voices in the same place for a long time.

                                    - for Loren Fredricks

Loren was constantly sketching. I bought this one at a fundraiser for his doctor bills at Nina Dunn's in 1993, put it on the Summer/Fall 1993 issue of Dry Crik Review. http://www.cowboypoetry.com/drycrik.htm#summer3

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Another 3/4 inch last night, the hills are gaining texture as the green feed gets ahead of the cows and calves scattered across the tops of ridges all week long with plenty of moisture on the grass to sustain them. Even without sunshine, isolated splotches of early fiddlenecks, snowdrops and poppies get ready for their wild explosion of color - ground saturated now, almost every canyon leaking rivulets into the creek. What a year!

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another half-inch overnight, we're in the middle of a wet pattern. The stockwater ponds are filling up, but little runnoff for the most part as the rains have come easy and had a day or two to soak inbetween. More slated for this a.m. and again on Friday/Saturday, a storm forecast as bigger, windier and colder with snow down to about 4,000 feet.

Awfully nice to see this much rain!

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Half-inch overnight, we’ve enjoyed a nice slow inch of rain during the past three days with very little runoff. Depending on the weatherman, it should clear today with varying forecasts throughout the week as we try to find a window to finish branding calves, three little bunches yet to go. Meanwhile, playing accountant for Uncle Sam.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It seems spring since November with
October rain and green, few frosty nights.
Just now, birds in the bare oaks practice

promising refrains, cows upcanyon quiet
with branded calves on damp, cool grass.
Not a hint of the buzz that marks the end

and we grin to one another, listen and grin
where generations have gathered, horses
tethered and irons grown cold, grinning

beneath Sulphur with a little spot of poppies
burning gold. Weathered smiles, we show
teeth and listen to our hearts howling.

                                             - for Spencer Jensen

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Craig Ainley

...gassin' w/ Earl...

Thank you all. Early rains, big calves, plenty work.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With a break in the weather, we spent a beautiful Saturday with Clarence and Frances Holdbrooks collecting a few cows and calves with the Mule and a little hay.

Clarence & Frances's camp for a burrito and beer

Belle Point cows and calves on the way down the hill

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 4:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tall shadow on the morning wall,
like a person waiting in the dark
when I awake without a mother,

now planted atop my father
like shoeboxes in a black closet
I’ll never open – only to drive by

            with a nod to the gods
            in case they’re listening.

Cast from the desk lamp,
she comes alive when I rise
to get more coffee, changes

shape and grins with gestures.
The one she gave Robbin
has bloomed every year

since her father died, white
faces reaching for the light
when we’d return from Elko –

after ten cold days in a stale
empty house, looking out at Sulphur
as our sweet ‘welcome home’.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Little do we know of that ground
between the lush, iridescent hills
and that beyond them, except

it’s magical. How some days it
rains with coincidence when
we’re most vulnerable and open,

so helpless within ourselves –
powerless but to ignore the obvious.
You can feel the shuffling

of spirits, of ghosts, or angels slip
ahead to make the forgotten
connections to the old world –

set up camp and start a fire. The air
sings songs, one after another until
all harmonize to make you feel

like leaving your flesh, almost
blindly reaching out to touch
and hold what you know

very little about – like young calves
running, bucking across
the uneven green because they can.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"Twenty-Sixth Winter" has been selected as the Guardian's 'Poem of the Week'. Also a bit about Elko and cowboy poetry. Interesting perspective from the UK.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog

Nothing stays at the top of their page very long, so you may have to scroll down a ways.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ranges of foothills fall sharply from clouds
stacked against Sierra snow, pastel ridges
washed pink and lavender under light gray rain –

I want to stop and paint them from the railroad
overpass, on the highway from Visalia – park
and stop time, freeze it all while I brush

powder to paper. Commuting for weeks,
I can read the leanings of the urgent
escaping work, racing towards something

somewhere I can’t imagine as important
as these mountains – a different meaning
in the light of every day. Wrinkled one

behind the other, I identify each dark line
as it jags into the Kaweah like the folds
of bedclothes as she sleeps, going home.

December 27, 1924 - February 6, 2010

Margaret C. Dofflemyer was born in Visalia to Dorothy (Hannah) and John F. Cutler on December 27, 1924. Great-granddaughter of John Cutler, first elected judge in Tulare County in 1853, she attended Redwood High School, Stephens College and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1945.

In 1946, she married Robert T. Dofflemyer of Exeter on February 14th. Margaret was an active member of the Las Madrinas Guild and its support of the Valley Children’s Hospital and a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority. She was also among the founding families of the Venice Hill Preparatory School in the early 1960s. She was preceded in death by her husband Robert in 1997, and her sister Catherine C. Kramer in 2003.

She is survived by her daughter, Virginia S. Dofflemyer of Alameda; and sons, John C. Dofflemyer of Lemon Cove and W. Todd Dofflemyer II of Exeter; four grandchildren, Jessica Dofflemyer of Kilauea, HI, Amanda Bauscher of Capitola, Robert T. Dofflemyer II of Woodlake and Katy Dofflemyer of Los Angeles and two great-granchildren, Bodhi Rouse and Cutler Bauscher.

She will be interred at the Exeter District Cemetery. At Margaret’s request, no services are pending.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Today I remember the pieces, deep
reds and blues of my mother’s Imari
glued to Mary Hadley’s farm scenes –

a fractured clash of bright and pale
that fit somehow to make a landscape
I can abide, but better on the borders

of the garden. With each glazed shard,
we till and plant our grief, a glint of color
for tomorrow’s tomatoes and squash.

I want to plant something in her
grand twenty-gallon vase that’s only
held umbrellas on its carved oak stand

half-century in a dark and dusty corner.
I want to bring it back to life, make it
useful in a pagan coup d’état that sings

with art fading in the weather, as we
all do in time, a song that celebrates
owning nothing with this flesh.

A place she can visit for coffee
and a cigarette, make suggestions
while we work the earth.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Up the Middle Fork, high in the scent of cedars
below Alder, just past that first patch of bear clover
where young bulls catch their breath and inhale

the pungent wild steamed in mountain sunshine –
a jumping-off spot to Billy’s Cabin, where Allen Drury
left his autograph with J.G. Boswell’s, my hand

beneath them, on the wall boards, now all gone.
Burro Creek, Copper Mines or Cascades – naked names,
memories and dreams still pulse there.

Mom and I at first-crossing searching under
water colored rocks for hellgrammites, a history
of learning a river that forever flows,

and floods at times – clears the deadfall,
with changes below – cycles and circles,
the scent of cedars from the shade of an oak.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Plain as paper, one can explore
the blank sheet, the light clouds
stretching across the Great Basin –

snow upon the purple ranges,
time unchanging time. Here
the wheel was lifted by hand,

progress slow, each step digested.
In a bullet, we fly by at seventy
into hours of silent space, whole

thoughts shared between us
without words spoken – not another
near, but the old souls who left no trail,

who camped and crossed before.
No place for dreamers nor the heartless,
this plain sage-ness, not for those

afraid of coyotes, ghosts and darkness –
yet so accessible from here
as we float from Elko to Bishop, home.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)