DRY CRIK Journal

It’s not a cartoon, yet the main character
seems to be a courageous mouse, a clean
and ingenious rodent who dares beyond

the thatched breastworks of his nest,
out of his clutch of dry grasses into
the real and dangerous world.

I open the scale box as he leaps
to the ruled beam and disappears like
a fireman down the connecting rod

onto the long arms that will hold fat
steers suspended in air, above the small
rattler curled asleep in the dark cool.

He starts back up the rusty rod, poking
his nose through the square hole of the box
as I sweep his home aside with the cobwebs,

leaving nothing to impede the full swing
of the scale beam. He watches as I oil
the sliding counterweights that have measured

a life’s work: each May weighing the season’s
grass harvested from hills since before I was
born – he hangs there twitching whiskers,

but every third draft, moves back into the box
as I balance, trading-out his high-rise rent
just like the generations before us.

January 1, 2008: One of the interesting aspects of publishing early drafts of poetry online is the ongoing editing after the fact. Knowing full well that not every piece is a keeper and not satisfied with this one, I considered deleting the entry altogether at one point during our busy, but delightful, holidays with family. Generally deaf to suggestions from others in this regard, I received the following as part of an email:

Wow. This verse so sounds like you. And yet!?! It sounds of a new voice too. I’m not articulate or knowledgeable enough to have a clue why, but it does. Every day I’ve snuck back to reread it a couple of times as I do my daily internet stuff.

Today in the savoring, it hit me that I’ve been reading about your mouse starting with the third stanza. Huh? So I paused to pay attention, and questioned the habit. While this is just the thought of one errant broad in Reno . . . . For me the verse really holds up beautifully without the opening commentary. And, I’m tempted to wonder of the title being just “The Weight.”

I have posted the original version in the ‘continued’ section below for anyone interested in where we started. She is right about drop-kicking the first two stanzas, my early-morning warm-up lines that became separate from the poem early-on in the writing only to find their way back as part of it before I was done. My reasoning for keeping them was reinforcing the ‘conversational’ tone, perhaps the ‘new voice’ she refers to. Dropping the article, I’m sticking to the title to reinforce the make-believe partnership. The voice actually reminds me of “Cattails” published in the eponymous chapbook in 1993 and reprinted below.

CATTAILS

Bobcat, bored with squirrel meat and Valley Quail,
watched Great Bear snag Salmon in the cobbled rapids
below the many mountain forks of the Kaweah River.

Following bones & fishtails, he schemed of how to taste
fish without getting wet. He thought to emulate
Rattlesnake's slow movement that enticed Field Mice to him.

Above the sandy cutbank where Salmon swam, dark & green,
Bobcat hung the black tuft of his long tail, teasing Salmon
to investigate & leap from the water onto the dry rocks.

Having such great fun making angry Salmon jump & churn
the water, Bobcat forgot all about eating fish. Rolling
in the willow shade with laughter, he forgot about his tail.

Babcat screamed and ran, dragging Salmon into the sand,
his pretty tail clamped tight in the sharp teeth. In pain with
tears, he begged Salmon to let go, promising not to eat him.

Salmon broke Bobcat's tail to speak, "I shall die soon
anyway to be pecked by Ravens & eaten by Raccoons, but
you, Bobcat, shall never fool anyone again with your tail."

Ashamed, Bobcat hid in the hills to hunt only at night.
And there, where the Kaweah slows below the mountains,
Salmon died to rot in the sand with Bobcat's pretty tail.

From that day since, for every child of Bobcat's children
born without tails, & for every child of Salmon's children
never spawned, here cattails first began to grow on tules.

Continue reading "WEIGHMASTERS" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Late summer, the creek draws back
into familiar sand, special cobbles
worn smooth and caged in a tangle

of sycamore roots, half-exposed
where water pools. Sometimes
these are few and far between.

Here we are vulnerable, approach
sweet sustenance with caution,
yet learn to relax within old skins

and grin at our survival. Some days,
we own the waterhole, make music
until the stars fade into dawn light.

Quite sure this one’s triggered by an email from an old friend. Right at an inch in the gauge.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had thought that day I started
when the summer sun used to break
in long white shards over the Sierras

to blind, spread and fall onto the Valley
floor, onto Uncle Lou’s Red Malagas:
translucent bunches hung from a canopy

of canes at first light like offerings
to deities to be picked, packed and hauled
to the shed for weeks – how glorious!

Dust subdued with dew, foreign smell
of sawdust on empty boxes nested in
tall water grass – I had a job with men

along the avenue bustling with lidding
lugs, loading and unloading trailers
towed by the faded gray and red Ford 8N.

One to a long row of intertwined vines,
a dozen women plucked raisins and birdpecks
before placing each bunch like fat soldiers

into the box. It was an art to tuck each
with shoulders up into a mounded ocean
of crimson berries, then press the last

row of generals in, green stems up for
unpacking somewhere East of the mountains.
Dad and Louie made a deal to hire me

to swamp full lugs out and empties in – at
the beckon of women deep in the field.
Just eleven, but old enough to earn

seventy-five cents an hour to order
and buy a twenty-gauge shotgun
from Sears & Roebuck through the mail.

Continue reading "WINCHESTER MODEL 12" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One may wonder why, in God’s name especially, I might post the following poem, but the reasons are several. Poetry, I believe, is a stream running parallel with hands-on experience, the song we hear that makes even the most mundane, or in this case the unspeakable, richer. The metaphors that find their place in a second sight that comes naturally to people dependent on all the elements of a land-based culture (whether they write poetry or not) is simply the humorous and easily-accessible silver lining for a lifetime of so many dark clouds. If this is indeed true, one can write poetry about anything!

The topic is timely with today’s technology, fraught with fear for so many and subsequently postponed with tragic consequences. For all those reared in this macho culture, it’s no big deal: I felt and remember nothing. The only discomfort is the 24-hours of fasting/cleansing and shaking-off the drugs after the fact. If the poem assuages one cowboy’s fear, it serves my purpose.

DR. BROWN

As evening crawls up the mountain,
we critique our town performance with
a gin and tonic, a day’s preparation for

an early-morning colonoscopy behind me,
I remember being wheeled between
rumpled beds of patients recovering,

rolling down a narrow crowding alley
to the chute. Corral short of humor,
I compare nothing outloud. Small cubicle

with wear on big machinery, I search
for a cable coiled like a lariat hanging
somewhere. Tall, outdoor doctor asks

if I’m “all pooped-out,” as if for the
first time. Urgent nurses kind, but
after a second dose of drugs: nothing.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The desk looks north – purple strays
trimmed pink at dawn, upcanyon
clouds stretch, touch, change shape

aloft over Rowell Meadow beyond
the silhouette of Redwood Mountain.
South wall solid, it cannot see down

canyon or out upon the farm ground
cut squarely by roads and dusty avenues
between orchards of orange trees –

it cannot see how the lights of all
the little tractor towns have grown
together to illuminate the night, but

it sees enough through paper stacked
from other worlds to hold this gaze and
pretend its limbs embrace the sky again.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

                    You can’t bear to listen for long,
                    it’s too intense.
                    - William Stafford, (“It’s Like This”)

Your card still marks the poem
in a book wrapped with ribbon
you gave me after a reading

half-dozen years ago in Elko –
kind-faced stranger saying
quietly, it was meant for me.

Page corners ruffled pink
with a wine stain, coffee
crescents on the cover

wipe off unlike the soil
of Dry Creek on each page
of Bill Stafford’s poetry.

The blade twists a little
yet, each time I open to
what may have been a random

bookmark, or a random poet
listening for that sound beyond
us all that makes us human –

but I think of you.

                    for Bonnie Pomeroy Stern

Continue reading "I CRY EACH TIME" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You may not remember
their proper names, but
in cool shade after adding
sweat and water to
seasons of the same soil,

you learn the talk of little birds
on oaks trees grazing
upside down – busy phoebes
feeding a nest of bugs, rock
wrens working at your feet
or the plain brown birds
preening in the garden shower.

None majestic – no fierce-some
standard legions muster ‘round –
yet hawks and ravens find
this “no fly-zone” enforced
by vigilant red-wing fighter pilots
and western flycatchers spurring
eight-second rides over treetops.

Nondescript and overlooked,
frail puffs of feathers most
big birds learn to respect.

Continue reading "THE ORDINARY" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 4:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

                           …a gusher of poems
                           that poured out of the house
                           on Highland Street
                           and watered the town
                                      -Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel
                                      (“The Gusher, 5-12-89,” A PRINCE ALBERT WIND)

What of science soothes the souls
that haunt the draws and ridges
for a song, for the rhythmic chant

of wind and rain - the storm
that softens their way of going
through time? How they long

to suggest sounds that open clouds
to natural grace, to resonate
with being born once more.

A contrail's white streak east
at dawn dissolves in minutes
over Nevada's great timeless

underwater basin risen
to an endless sea of sage afoot
that can climb into your mind,

read thoughts and forever wait for
passing mortals – sometimes lucky
to hitch a ride on a poem.

Continue reading "SOMETIMES LUCKY" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With grins of green, everything
relaxes. Even the brown
patches lounging on the south

slopes privately bathing in a slow
gray rain up and down an empty
canyon road – gentle strum upon

the roof, the soothing hymn.
Proof-enough-of miracles:
grass brought back to life.

Anything in the foothills
has already happened
if you look – if you can hear

the old men’s stories when
you were green, recall
extremes from yesteryear

they thrived on – ground grown
holy with grandfather oaks
a-grin again in the rain.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Cut limb planted
like a fence post
near the wash rack
where weary horses
stand for hose spray –
          matted hair,
          crust of salt,
sweaty rivers run
together until clear
down their flanks
for twenty years
          to irrigate
the cottonwood afire
at dawn – huge silhouette
of new translucent leaves
in flames. Ardens sed virens,
shepherds tending miracles
it sometimes seems.

Continue reading "BURNING TREE" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This side of the stream of evening
cars and pickups flowing up and down
the canyon, half-lit sorrel geldings graze

the fading green knoll: hollow ground
where native women stayed beyond
these bred, red heifers at the fence

mowing clover and rye like a machine
moving randomly closer in a single sound
of harvesting: a rhythmic slow dance

of efficiency. Each heavy head lifts, one
by one to look beneath the Palo Verde tree,
dark eyes in white faces: remembering.

Up slope across the creek, your father
scattered – mine a decade gone today
as we wander in and out worlds

before us. Beneath the hose-spray,
it is raining on fresh peppers planted
like leafy soldiers dripping from ridges

into puddled furrows – sweet aroma
of wet manure: last summer’s horses
standing head to tail, batting flies.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Few secrets in a little town, kids
brooming sidewalks after school,
fat-tired Schwinn’s slung with bags

of county history we thought was news.
No one felt anonymous, not even
the lean Okie kids from Tuleville

who rode the bus with the rest of us
they hated. The older girls claimed
the long black seat and brayed

gospel songs as the bus filled-up –
but then someone behind me
would always start it to rocking:

erupting with Tennessee Ernie Ford’s
“Sixteen Tons.” Lyrics you could see
before they got off at the company store,

three dirt streets of clapboard shacks
with broke-down wrecks looking-out
so helplessly that we all sang along.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We left the fields, left long days tending
soil with a hoe in our hands as our minds
ran down each furrow of familiar ground

like water. At the door, mud and dust
followed us to bed. And when it came
to harvest, nothing else in the world

mattered but the work: a season’s hope
and labor picked, gathered and hauled
to the shed under the threat of rain.

Between drought and flood, we clung
to rare seasons of bountiful luck – raised
our eyes to skies without answers. But

news comes now in time for coffee, the
planet’s dramas and disasters keep us busy
on our way to work for the company

store. So convenient now to balance
our good fortune with tragedies, and when
it comes to worry: our cups runneth over.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Each dark dawn before the siren sounds
the start of day, I meet you here on a white
sheet, unfold the old hinges to steal time

away. Only the fuzzy light to saddle by
above the hitch rail burns like a photograph
drawing the horns of bleached skulls out

apart from the barn – all else: black as ink.
You listen patiently and laugh at all the right
moments, grin inwardly at lines erased

before they slip boldly up a familiar fork.
Big fish on Burro Creek, scaling slick
waterfalls to hang and cast tied-deer-hair

into each small pool upstream. It is a test
I’ve grown too old to prove to myself, or to
you anymore – we know the truth:

how hard it is to get home off the mountain.
The flirt with tragedy for each sleek trout, wild
fish stories when we had nothing else to tell.

                                                for JEG

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The balance of all things, even
the south slopes turning brown in spring –
cattle early in the day to mottled shade
of leafless trees looks like the last line, yet
the finches and the bullfrogs don’t believe
it’s over. No red chests parade the railing

with a love song, no mess of stems spilling
from the rafters, not one bold croak to start
the cacophonous chorus from the cattails,
no deafening hum of bugs and bees
busy in the morning’s steam of dew
up from the shadowed, canyon grasses.

High in the granite beneath the ridges,
small fires of persistent poppies burn
white gold, and in the flats, thin skiffs
of forget-me-nots bolt and melt away.
Spring blues: even the green’s gone gray.
Fingertips raw, I find the chords

to a slow-thumping strum and moan
outside alone to release the churning –
all the guttural inequities within me
into the gloaming and let the rhythm
of the deep sounds hold the beat
of an old dry chant my lungs have found.

On the move, coyote and bobcat gods
pause in their tracks, the old oaks listen
politely amused for they are sure
as the hillsides grinning in the evening -
of all things - that they will endure,
even the feral howl of a human being.

Continue reading "VERNAL EQUINOX 2007" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

All too well we know the curse
of words, its blind-flailing reach
for the sound and sense
we must make into a song.

Mother remembers the ways
of women to my wife, as told to her
by my father’s mother: how it was

           to be there ever-ready for the
           six-week harvest of grapes,
           just before a month of picking
           and packing oranges if they
           didn’t freeze. Smudge pots
           and wind machines, up all
           night to the propellers’ roar
           stirring air, smell of diesel
           fueling flaming helmets
           of the roadside sentries
           guarding fruit. Dark weeks
           of soot eclipsed the sky,
           snuck into the house to turn
           every child dirty overnight, to
           settle in the canyons of our ears
           and damp noses, to collect in
           the corners of our eyes.

It could be worse. It could be hard
ground on the end of a shovel, or
the slapping sound of hand-stacking
rail cars full of splintery grape lugs –

           the random hum and rhythm
           of certain words on your breath
           that always seemed to help
           get the hard work done.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Steep south slope of clay and shale
riffled with poppies of paler gold,
short-stemmed families seeded
in the hard ground for dry years,

another bunch branded behind us –
goosenecks trailing dust downcanyon
to the creek road home. Short spring
and we agree that March still can

do anything. Earl recalls snow bridges
at Simpson on the Kings in August,
frozen avalanches undermined
they had to dynamite to cross –

watched a pack mule disappear
up an icy cavern – could only wait
‘til he came back. Spooked them all
after the wet March snows in 1958.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Small bunch. Calves push 300 pounds.
Frizzled-ends of winter-hair after a month
of all-night frosts. Cows thin, ushered-in

to the lane, press the fence to watch –
ever-listening for their name as we brand:
one at a time to the whine of a twine,

slow drum of hooves upon wet sod, each
hoot tuned for every loop up in smoke.
Outside the pens patched with so many

metal panels that the eye ignores the boards,
wide green stretches even with a quiet sky,
leafless thickets of Blue Oaks whisper

another time: Effie on her white horse
leading a string of eighty cows and a couple
of coyotes to these corrals – one lone

woman calling, an ungodly caterwauling
echoed through this gate where young
men stared with their six head gathered.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Small town of Exeter, main street muraled
with round, dark cars parked diagonally
in the late 20s when Granddad was young

looms upwards like a huge black and white
photo on the front-facing wall that secures
deposit boxes and banded bundles of cash,

concealing the two tellers working towards
the end of twenty fidgety patrons inside the door.
When I was six, I had a little bankbook –

put my ten bucks for a month of gleaning
walnuts after school inside, reaching-up
to a broad, kind smile to keep my money.

“Hey, John!” breaks into my daydream.
“How’re you?” I scramble for a name.
“Still playing cowboy?” I feel the weight

of black beaver lift even with a mindless grin
making conversation. “Been at it forty years,
I’d say – guess it’s what I do!” comes

out of my chest that my mind let’s escape
like a snorty cow sorted through the gate.
But I can’t help wondering what I’ve done

with my life. We played Little League
together – he in his nylon jogging pants
and Nikes   farming frozen oranges.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No other way to watch TV
after a long day’s friction –
joints giving to the gravity

of wear, but with Advil and
gin, there’s nothing left to do
except to conclude: there’s

little peace in the minds
of men and even less good
will to get the job done.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

lettered
upon the roofless remains
of someone’s private dream.
Small, white-walled skeletons
open to the celestial, weathered
by wind, snow and rain, just
north of two rusty relics –
round-bodied pickups
nosing the placid surface
of white skiffs and sage,
rising out of the desert
like two brown trout
kissing.

                for Jessie Smith
                for showing me another way
                home

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Miniature black beaver set
over loose blond threads
escaping a forgotten ponytail,

laced red packers peeking
brightly under faded jeans
beneath a sleeveless
white cotton blouse

to which I offer
my most sincere compliments
for lookin’ sharp –
but meaning mostly
her free and easy carriage
gracing the way to work with Dad
on a summer Sunday morning

            how were I younger
            I’d be charging her
            around at preschool

when she interrupts
with the four year-old facts,

“Hey, it’s just me
underneath
all these cowboy clothes!”

                 for Katie Lynn Fry

from APRIL BULLFROGS

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Torsos thick as trucks rise from a huge,
silted tangle of roots, colossal limbs
embrace the other’s empty space,
side by side, like old friends – twin

Valley Oaks entwined in one thatched
canopy for centuries where eagles
choose to roost above corrals,
where lumbering bulls claim shade

and the remnants of natives come
for a feather – and where boy and father
learned how anger works.
After fifty years, voices soften,

the horse dance sort of cattle slows
as eagles idly share a myth of men –
recalling swallowed tears and a boy’s
sweet solace found in booming mantras

of profanity, iambic ire and the mountains
of alliterative discord that finally drove
the old bull off. They come less often now
that one lets go its grasp, sheds hollow

limbs of marrow tunneled by decades of ants.
Great white heads cocked, they still stay
for the entertainment – looking down their
hooked yellow beaks at the show below.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)