DRY CRIK Journal

            The beauty of things was born before eyes and
                sufficient to itself; the heart-breaking beauty
            Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.
                                    - Robinson Jeffers (“Credo”)

Each stone fit into a wall of words
works across the landscape, holds
sweet notions close and chaos out.

A remnant seam along the draw,
where you saw rattlesnakes rise
entwined, kept the Bequette hogs

fat on acorns so their Durham cows
wouldn’t slip their calves, remains
after my father hauled smaller rocks

into a wall of his own. Only boulders
left, I marvel at the days and years
inched-out of the bottom with bars –

the deliberate rhythm of a heart
working at the edge of a moraine
shaping poetry to last a century.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The current irritants
like flies light
just beyond reach,

indefinable swarms
on the outskirts
of my mind.

Rearrange
coffee cup
and ashtray –

stack scattered
yellow notes
and nameless numbers –

make space,
inhale
and write

like horses head-to-tail
in dreams washed
rhythmically across

closed-eyes.
It seems a poetry
we might emulate:

sweet diversions
to seductive places
that brush the flesh.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hint of smoke from northern fires
holds a pink glow upcanyon, dawn late
upon dark ridges near trimmed in white

ribbons rising – lifting the purple cloak
of night into another Sabbath morn.
Without sound, it could be Day One.

You may not ever see it so, or feel
as forgiven – relieved of the complexities
coiled like barbed wire of abandoned fences,

old strands rusting years in the grass.
With your short clock, third day nosed
upon my daughter’s breast – you feel it now

waking in and out of shapeless dreams
you’ll paint yourself in time – in times
where space alone may not be enough

to let the day dawn upon you –
or let the gloaming ride into starlight
with all the endless universes beckoning.

Continue reading "FOR CUTLER IRL BAUSCHER" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

                        I learned the other tongue
                        by which men spoke to beasts
                        – all its terms and tones.
                                      - Wendell Berry ("Horses”)

A murmur of words at the saddle rack –
an easy mind’s awakening in the dark
before the first light of fearful news
spreads into summer heat by afternoon.

A good horse listens well, drops an ear,
scoops the sound of breath and heartbeat
from the mantra of familiar words
for their meaning at the moment.

Finding inconsistencies easy to spot,
even cows can tell you what you don’t
truly want to know about yourself
crossing the wild range of their eyes.

Once I grinned at old men in dented pickups
rising early to feed a dozen, fat cows –
watched them cling to the tailgate, anything
to keep their balance and to stay upright.

                                                  - for E.J.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

More than hands can grasp or minds
undress completely, there is no religion –
no one-god-for-sale for everyone, yet

a tree frog lives in the dark overflow
of the new bathroom basin, perches
on its ceramic edge when the faucet runs,

then leaps to the higher ground
of towels draped loosely in the corner
to watch me brush my teeth. Sometimes

he explores beyond the door looking
for someone, but quick to retreat
to the sink, his home. Even the smallest

have dominion woven with man’s – and we
each bear the weight of the sky like ants
in a world without coincidence. The Red Tail

greets the 4-wheel drive with a low glide,
recognizes hay truck from the rare hunter’s
loud gunshots and the flutter of crippled quail.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For some
it comes down
like a sprinkle of rain
as if from heaven –

a slow soaker, shirt
matted to the flesh, that
bare-chested feeling
reborn again – even

spun in summer’s clutch
of dust and drought.
No urgency or rush
to that last embrace

when winter waits
for everyone, each
moment counts
like drops of rain.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

            the cow that died to give its hide
            to make you look so shiny...
                                                - Ed Brown

And you did, the sheen of your synthetic
leather-looking top gathered tastefully
below a deep crevasse of tanned flesh,

Ed’s blue ballpoint upon a napkin cloth
in the half-lit darkness of the White Horse
bar, on a roll after dinner and a reading –

the complete poem framed on the wall
reminds you of that evening twenty-five
years ago: cowboys come to entertain

when were young-enough to be irreverent,
but with scars-enough to know better.
A crossfire of fresh rhymes ricocheted

around the room, as around the West
in those days, but Ed had the pen
and final say as to what went down.

                                                for Jeanie White

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve wanted to be a tractor driving man
since I was six – wear an engineer’s gray
and white, striped cap and be someone

who could get the job done. I helped
put this pasture in right after the Feds
condemned the top fifteen feet of clay

for the earthen core of Terminus Dam –
right after a summer of lifting rocks
into the ’42 dump truck, flathead Ford.

Took thirty years of water and cattle
to make topsoil again –I cut deep swaths
across it, riding high atop the diesel’s

steady monotone. Each new round leaps
into the headed rye to fix upon a fencepost
or notch between oaks, holding my thoughts

in a straight line. I feel my father grinning
in the middle of this green mowed field –
keeping me busy at sixty still on the ranch.

I borrowed a wheel tractor and rented a mower and found a few rocks that we missed in 1961, (or that have worked their way up to the surface since). From the summer 1991 issue of Dry Crik Review, Jim ‘Tex’ Raths’ poem, “John Deere Dreaming” also came to mind more than once. But our country is not the smooth sandy loam of the Valley, and as with most tractor-driving endeavors here, used farm machinery succumbs to our harsher elements. Half-way done, I’ve got a rental tractor coming while we try to fix what’s wrong with my neighbor’s machine.

5.21 We start weaning the first bunch this a.m. - Still editing the poem online, adding a stanza and changing the last line slightly. High temperatures forecast down into the 70s through the weekend with a chance of T-showers. Crazy weather!

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It could be everything
has heart and soul
of some dimension,

like the lupine in a pot
trying to grow – it
could be even the dry

hulls, the hollow stems
and skeletons of old
feed, claim some residual

brilliance yet to be realized
by summer cows this fall
in a healthy, suckling bull.

Everybody knows –
even the mosquito
ever-probing for a pulse.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A parade of shiny cars
twenty feet apart descends
the mountain road
much slower than their ascension
to the Christian camp
in the pines of Hartland.

A dirge-like procession
less eager than their speed
uphill. It feels as they pass
that someone may have seen God
in the narrows alongside
one of two gravel trucks,
late Good Friday afternoon
and testified – witnessed convincingly
at the campfire as they waited
for the full moon’s rise
over the Great Western Divide.

Perhaps last night’s red lights,
flashing only. A solemn respect
for everything in place
by how the herd moves
in unison – a bunched-up, yet
evenly-spaced slow dance
on this most glorious morn:

three shades of gold flame
eclipse green south slopes
in a side-canyon
above flailing limbs and twigs
of white-barked sycamores,
greenhead pair preening
on the creek bank – Hereford
cows and calves congregated
at the water trough, warm
bellies turned toward the sun.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dressed in color, she is pretty in the rising light –
poppies torch hillsides where granite meets clay
mixing gray outcrops that hold and decompose

high above the oaks pushing light green leaves.
Smiling brightly, she seems to miss the murmur
of grasses requesting rain. Yet in the air, the mass

unrest builds within this hard crust hidden beneath
the waves of emerald blades bolting for the sun.
At this moment, this juncture, this balance

of sun and rain, anything can happen as she shifts
to leave ahead of eagles north for the summer.
We are attentive to every gesture tossed our way.

Cool is all we got over the weekend, missing several good chances for errant thundershowers, dark cells sailing around us. Light frost the past few mornings – its thaw teases, raining briefly as the sun lifts over the ridge (7:50 PDT). A better grass year than last, the calves are fat – rainfall amounts to date are not that much more than last year’s totals. The south slopes north of Woodlake, “W” Mountain, have turned already and in the steep granite on Barton Point at the start of Dry Creek Road, the grass turns dull. 10-day forecast clear into a warming trend.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Random script of bad news, a network spin
of possibilities, a click away to cyberspace
waiting in the dark for a promised shower.

Clay crust hard beneath the filaree, long
needles reach between plumes of fiddlenecks –
each head’s arch of golden horns trumpeting

the sweet equilibrium that may
hinge on dawn’s gray cloak up canyon.
No wind upon fresh green oak leaves –

the Hereford’s idly graze first light, nurse
fat calves among the forget-me-nots, white
bellies deep, it seems, in drifts of snow.

Two bulls bellow through a fence
half-a-mile across the creek away,
pace and paw to protect this moment

that eclipses memory of any other – each
nanosecond stretches into eternity as
each molecule reaches for a trace of rain.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Early morning in, he’d exclaim
that spring had sprung, a jillion
blades of grass jabbing skywards –

hillsides, roadsides, outside spilt
wildly with bright colors – down
by the river, all shades of lupine.

As I grew older, I felt it first –
tasted air to long beyond the wire.
Buckeyes out, redbuds start, bare

oak twigs swell – and in the thatch,
red-chested finches gather, flit and
prance to the first serenades of spring.

Last week, we branded two bunches of our own calves followed by an all-day affair at Frank Ainley’s place up the road on Thursday. We’ve got a couple of small bunches left to mark. With a slight chance of rain this coming weekend, this could be a rare wildflower year. 76 degrees yesterday, as we head into a cooling trend.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 4:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The fence over the hill goes on –
meets another at an oak tree near
the section corner you can’t see

from here. It’s not as old as the walls
of rock along the creek, or the granite
potholes worn into slabs by smooth

phallic pestles passed hand to hand
by generations of women. Dad and
Harvey built it in the 40s after

the atom bomb ended the war –
mushroomed in the dreams
of everyman. It kept us honest

for awhile, and left unpressed
the cattle stayed at home
and the neighbors got along.

Joe Bruce calls to say it’s a 'woman
rain' he’s driving through somewhere
near Colorado Springs, soft drops

on his windshield, his wipers clear
a heavy mist in six-second sweeps –
yesterday’s same sweet tenderness

that lingers now in iridescent greens.
Yet the fence over the hill goes on
and on within the minds of men.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With crystal drops, the frost rains off
the roof at dawn – shadows reach
across the canyon, red-chested finches

flirt in a thatch of leafless twigs,
buds ablaze in silence – sweet silence.
There is no other news to know

except for the felling of an acorn swelled
four hundred years or more ago
in a manner of minutes. Chisel teeth

gush sawdust with certain ceremony
of wedges and angles – crack after crack
into the gunshot’s last snap of oak.

The Castros undercut the five foot trunk
that held eagles up above us all, laid
the dead gently down when out of the dark

cavity of broken limb, a snow white owl
leaps for open air like a dove released
in the morning’s deep blue horizon.

Its gray mate rides the timber clear
to crunching ground. We buck it up and
talk respectfully of trees along the creek –

old sycamores and the Valley Oak Dad saved
in ’59 when they built the dam, of the pirate
Drake in for repairs when this was

a landmark for Charlie’s distant relatives.
Like a bear cub in the thick of limbs,
I hear him say how he shook acorns

onto a tarp for native women in Yosemite –
these two strong, tree-climbing sons
doing what they’ve done for centuries.

                        for Charlie, Gene & Butch

Continue reading "NATIVE KNOWLEDGE" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

            How could I have expected
            that after a long life I would
            understand no more than to wake up
            at night and to repeat: strange,
            strange, strange, o how strange, how
            strange. O how funny and strange.
                                - Czeslaw Milosz

Leaving the ranch to darkness, to
the half-moon and sparkling starlight
pressing to see through black February –

leaving it all alone to listen inside
to the TV news, the pusillanimous
and picayune for Enlightenment

this Election year. Lost my hearing
at the Shrine in ‘69 and lost my
patriotism in May 1970 – but still

I remember the long-haired revolution
that forever changed foreign affairs.
Children then, waiting for our M-16s

at graduation. Have you forgotten
how it was and why we’ll not have
another Draft – nor draft dodgers,

draft card burners, protests, peace
candidates and more than enough
love to go round a couple of times?

Spin of wind, terror and the weather –
fear upon fear the night outside ignores
as it adjusts to a Mayan calendar

helps sell new drugs with the catchiest
nomenclature – and legal enough
to stone us all the way to the grave.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First the windmill, then the salt house
folded into the earth below the old road
that followed the creek around the hill.

Board pens gone for pipe corrals, I still
look off between calves stretched
for marking – to inhale the calm

across the canyon, mountain steep
clear into the sky. My years know now
how to welcome something

that can’t be seen – to breathe deeply,
thank God and build another loop
to hold the moment a little longer.

                                           for Jody

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Waking to listen for rain in the dark,
for even a whisper upon the metal roof –
straining to see what can’t be heard

is normal from October to April,
despite night forecasts and maps of
computer models in living color,

in every farm house beyond town
well-before the lights come on
like clockwork – like a religion

connecting pagan souls shivering
under bear hides, underground
and waiting for the perfect season.

The drought in 1976 and ‘77
thinned the cowherd to match
what little grass the hillsides had –

they licked the clay and lived on seeds
with whatever kind of hay we could find.
One after another, the warm rains came

all spring long, covered the slopes with
sheets of solid gold. Nora Montgomery
pushing 100, played with native children

somewhere near Pogue Canyon, said
she couldn’t remember another year
with so many California poppies.

Worst and best, back to back,
Ralph Merhten admonished my delight,
reminding strong feed can’t coexist

with wildflowers, that the business
boils down to pounds of flesh – yet
we still harbor wild dreams of color.

A beautiful day to begin the New Year, clear blue sky, snow upcanyon peeking over Dry Creek’s greening ridges from Redwood Mountain in the Sequoia National Forest – Rose Parade mumbling in the background – Pasadena exceptionally clear as California awaits a forecast 4-7 days of rain.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 8:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)