DRY CRIK Journal

Nonsense drones like bumblebees
in the Palo Verde busy upside-down,
clutching yellow petals
before they fall to carpet ground
where weeds won’t grow.

For a month of evenings, two
ravens claim the top rail
by the well, black silhouettes
edging into one like lovebirds
pressed into a summer’s night.

At the gate, a rattlesnake owns
the loading chute we seldom use.
A leaky trough keeps grass
for cottontails green and
ground squirrels from floating.

Overnight, a weasel stacked our
two mama cats and a dozen kittens,
we gave away, atop a bale
of oat hay in a neighbor’s barn
full of mice and rats.

Good year for ducks, the creek
has run into July, evening Vs
pump down canyon over
Snowy Egrets wading warm
with Great Blue Herons

beneath new emerald canopies –
sycamores dressing for the heat
below the dark-blue smear
of leather oak leaves
on bleached-blond feed.

The Kaweah foams cold
with snowmelt, an upstream
drowning, another body lost
along the way-too-soon
before our weather changes.