DRY CRIK Journal

A little girl, her father sent her
inside, when he washed the blood
of brandings from his hands –
oak and hair, the pungent mix
of smoke still swirling round him.

She spends more time looking
down now at her own
translucent skin, deep blue rivers
running through her alabaster flesh
folded in her wheelchair.

She says it doesn’t feel
like Visalia anymore, born
and raised, endured eighty-five
years in the same place
she never noticed changing.

How she hated duty and
obligation – World War Two
and the love that flew away,
never to come back through
the door of her perfect cage.

Not the fairytale ending,
she closes the book and waits
for a menu, understands
that no one’s left
to protect her from this.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You remember her, the one that wouldn’t come
to the truck for hay – cussed and admired
what you couldn’t be yourself. That’s how it starts –

slipping-off in the brush – ask John Haines
what’s out there, clear the hell away from humans.
You remember her and grin. She knew.

Don’t tell Corb Lund that he’ll slow down
though I can’t see how, but look around
the corral to see who’s holding the fence up –

staying out of the way – and visiting.
Mostly gentle cows now, not like the supple
days of whip and spur, rope and reins

like ribbons strung – subduing the wild
we made wilder, in love with the chase
and the danger – when we were cowboys.

We have our heroes, the ones that didn’t need
a lot of attention, got the job done
and celebrated getting to do it again

like Snyder, Jeffers and Wendell Berry –
like Tyson, Russell, and Red Steagall
and all those crazy kids at the NFR tonight.

Just having fun with this one - creek's running with another eight-tenths in the gauge!

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

Wind out of the south,
the arm points up canyon,
my father’s weatherman.

He traces the range of peaks
that will bring rain, explains
the speed of blurring blades

beside Roy Lee’s corrals
before the flat was packed
inside the dam, before the flood

of fifty-five, before I could read.
Insistent, I hear it push
through trees in the saddle,

out of the south and into my face
stirring leaves at my feet – yet
I still wish the windmill back.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

                    …as in the night when there is no moon
                    I must have known it once
                                - Robert Mezey (“I Am Beginning to Hear”)

Or rusty bucket leaking starlight upside down,
pinholes to the lasting sun near heaven once
high in the granite where chilly air turns crystalline –

we were but boys, young mountain men
around a fire. But even then, I must have known
beneath that thin thimble of the old ones, must have

overheard their voices when I faced blue tongues
upon the coals. Tamarack, bold tamarack, ever
listening from the rock beneath the snows.

One is playing upon the lute, another braiding
rivers into a knot, making small talk in our dreams
and then remembers to lift the lid near dawn again –

bell mare restless in the cold. I must have known it
then, and now confined by time, awake into black space
for the familiar voices, sweet idle chatter leaking in.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Hal, the world’s gone crazy now –
but we’re paying the poor a little more
to go to wars in far-off places. We were right
to shut the campus down. You lost it then,
slipped off into that nether realm of a
nervous breakdown, we used to call it.
‘Make life rich,’ you told us students.

Whatever happened to the kid in fringe,
wore that leather jacket everywhere, pretended
he was going to ride Traveler around
the Coliseum grid iron? And quiet Ken,
the handsome guy who wrote poetry
you busted for smoking dope before class,
admonished for the broken trust among us?

How ‘bout the Israeli captain Uri, late
twenties stiff and impatient with our naïveté,
can you see him, where’s he living now?
And the brunette with full hips and lips,
her passion unsuccessfully repressed, even
in class daydreaming in your craggy face,
your dark Jewish eyes, remember that?

You came to visit twice. Sent back photographs
of children’s colored shoes in a line at the door –
and when I lived alone we drove the ranch,
you totaling species to yourself until a
nighthawk caught in our headlights. You were
closer to God then, old testament prophet
betrayed by the religion of business.

How many years has it been since you left
Nancy alone – how she tried to hold you
together – damn near twenty now, I’d guess.
We kept in touch for a little while,
exchanging cards until our minds got full
of more pressing stuff, more places
to exist where we could make it rich.

                                for Harold S. Spear

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In the background, the weathermen
have been waffling for a week,
clouds sailing north, early green

gone gray, red to purple fillaree
crisp the clay south slopes – needing
a drink, my father used to say.

A crescendo, a growing grumble
normal along the foothills between
rains, old men remembering

years in my mind: thirty-nine
and forty-seven – and seventy-seven
we somehow survived.

We are the oak trees and the grass,
we are the hillsides almost
always waiting for a rain.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know everything, now – every measure
of my consumption, recorded and sorted, up for sale.
Nothing private left to mull alone – no dreams

without an extra cast of marksmen – potshots
from the gray periphery of open space, a shrinking
gauntlet near the finish line, and the safety

of dark death, my last hope for privacy.
Is this how you drive the cattle crazy, into
a feeding frenzy craving more before the knife?

These new cowboys, loud young bucks
ready to make their mark and wave the flag
for barbed wire, railroads and prosperity.

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

It could as well be acorns arranged,
sorted and stored for winter – brittle
manzanita in the corner, anxious oak

under eve. We could as well be gophers
or woodpeckers anticipating cold or wet,
or both in this canyon that supported

three hundred humans, I’m told. In the air,
even the forgotten are making preparations,
busy leaping beams of horizontal light

burning at its edges like a grass fire.
Fall has come dressed like spring, teasing
suspiciously, vibrantly upon the green –

it is tempting to let old eyes go, follow her
off into the shadow of something new,
dark and grand that surely looms ahead.

Or it could be time has slowed the limbs
to seek simplicity, search each step – a
time to look beyond the maze of memory

and breathe, accept – ready the senses
to let instincts play with fresh words, the
honest and untrained upon our tongues.

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

Each step deliberate, if not delicate, the time –
I trust it was not wasted on dreams alone,
sweet butterfly, that you felt a fleeting glimpse
of grace move closer to your soul. How you must
envy deer, now. Was it the chase? The Challenge
butter buck, manzanita-headed, your neck thick
with testosterone, or could you smell him over the next
rise, taste his liver first? It does not matter now.

Buck’s bunkhouse for old cowboys, one of those
self-sufficient, Texas oil well spreads with a few
horned cows and gentle horses, tack room full of bits
and stories and a few young men come round to visit –
not some bed, not four white walls and a hospital gown.
Better a shade tree for old bulls to predict the weather,
play dominos and watch the landscape haze away.

The old horse wants to go, watches each knee buckle
to read direction – knows it, feels it, wants it just enough
to glide across the ground. See some country. See some cows.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Skirts sewn with low roads, parallel trails with grass
up the middle, first glance is never quite the same –
her bare steep slope south, one long ridge, high post

to peak, patch of laurels on her decomposing flesh –
north falls into buckeye, manzanita, live and poison oak
too thick to stand afoot, for man to approach.

Sprinkled with cattle grazing the grip of boney fingers
digging west into the creek or east into Mankins
where generations stayed before the homesteaders

quit their rock chimneys – high-pressure fold,
magma thrust upwards, pockets of crystal and quartz
set in granite, cracked seams leaking springs, she wears

little grass with her winter cap of snow. She does not
blink at my impatience and frustration with the world –
with the wet or dry years – she doesn’t really care.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I come prepared to edit, to cut and slash
hoping for refinement, some hope
for us all in that illusive space

where events unfurl from easy dreams –
that middle ground of pastoral song,
of grass and animals, legs deep in green.

The poem comes to me in the shower,
in the steam, line after lyric line
I must have read, I must have written

in my sleep – you all were there
and we breathed sweet harmony.
Too quick to remember, the words

streamed in banner lines I tried
to memorize, each ricochet leading
me away from the song still floating

somewhere in my mind. I could see it
happening, the real possibility that
with a little good luck we will survive.

                        - for Linda Hussa

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 3:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A man should (once a year
to get his head straight)
pack deep into the mountains up
tumbling rivers to the timberlines –
to the granite and the tamarack
to cook by. Damn few people
on the trails, damn little sign
of progress but for the night jets
and sputniks dodging stars,
or the sun glint of a bullet load
of humans crammed at the head
of fading contrails. A man needs
to breathe thin air and thunderstorms,
keep his counsel round a fire -
white hot coals feeding flames
reducing time to cold gray ash –
a place to be aware and go neutral.

A man should gooseneck the horses
to the trailhead – pack saddles, food
and gear and go a couple of days in
and stay awhile – get small, get
perspective, watch time roll
downcanyon with the river
               doing nothing, but
               there’s no space
               on my calendar
               for sanity.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Keeping distance and space
like unemployed bulls
pastured together is tricky business
moving from water to shade tree –

lots of postured grumbling, deep
silt holes pawed upon wide backs
stirring black clouds of flies.
But when it rains the air clean,

they can bellow for miles –
heads caked with mud,
they’ve whipped the earth
ready to inhale the moon.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Somewhere you are dying, a path crossed
remembered and lost – sweet moments sculpted,
an innocence now seasoned with perspective

from other places. We did not know it,
did not believe the obvious,
and did not care what others thought.

More like fish than the mast lights of ships
passing on an empty sea, more like swimming
parallel for awhile in a current of our own

making. Will you remember when you wonder
on your death bed, when you are tired of life,
and will you smile at all the things we said?

Not every face has a name anymore, some
I’ll never forget. But we stirred the waters
with words, wild words, for a moment.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fumbling with early morning laces
the kittens have left in unequal lengths,
always loosening the wrong one first

to make them right to tie,
I realize that it is our devices
that don’t always work well,

that frustrate our day, and nights –
our genius that is not perfect.
The float on the trough leaks

where the horses played last night
and the cows in a dust cloud
impatient for hay don’t know

it’s Sunday. There will be more
before the sun breaks the ridge –
Hallelujah, the brilliance of it all!

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)

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)

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)

We have come to this, now – this place,
wherever sheltered, this point in time
rushing towards us like a locomotive –

when the conclusion of all things rests
in one long moment if we’re lucky
watching the tree frog explore its territory.

We have learned to shut the hawkers out,
banging their wares in the alley, the needy
politicians with puppy eyes, and the orators –

all of them pushed to the dusty corners
of this moment on someone else’s landscape
for over sixty-five million years.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Come September, coyotes prowling first calf heifers
learn the sound of engines slowing, stopping, quitting
and the prolonged silence of a hollow point spinning
through space, speeding over dry grasses home.

A man assumes dominion, plays god, and brings
the wet and slick, back feet first, out into the light.
Head heavy, first blink, fluid-rattling life begins
limp at first, craving touch, wanting tongue.

Word gets around, mostly nose-to-nose bulletins
on the ridge trails, in the saddles above it all –
silent canine tales of fresh calves, the comings
and goings of humans and the white diesel pickup.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August promises rekindling. The sun slides
south along the ridge to her torso as she sleeps,
dark hair cascading into the creek at dawn
and sunset – cold starlit nights, she breathes.

August promises oak and manzanita fires,
branding irons for calves swelling yet in bellies
ambling to water. One by one they rise,
released from shade to plod the dusty track

across dry bleached feed, dead roots encased
in rock-hard clay. Few at water at once,
black hides meet in passing grumbles and
salutations – known each other all their lives.

August promises sweet darkness and storm –
thunder and all the churning furies that stir
the flesh and cleanse the soul, wash summer
dust into one more chance to be reborn again.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No matter the cash rebate that pays tax and license,
a man could have instead, two nice houses with split shake
roofs on five acres between here and Visalia forty years ago

and not need to install bumpers, hitch and headache rack
to keep it intact, not have to figure where to keep stretchers,
pipe wrenches, rifle and chain saw when he needs parts

in town. It’s become a crime I continue to commit, paying
more for less utility that I swap for heated seats and Sirius,
for all the snap and power an old man can handle.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One could say there is no peace,
never peace everywhere on earth –

some become soldiers, well-honed
tools of the powerful and afraid,
of the unreasonable, of the inhumane
in each of us – and some become

what they must to survive them.
Some become prey, feed and fodder
for the stronger, and the rest of us
become many feet on the treadmill.

But there are moments, epiphanies
lurking and waiting to spring
and spread wide and feathered wings
around us. We must slow down

to be caught, we must be watchful,
learn their track and sign, know
their scent and become familiar
with where they haunt the wild.

And when they find us, stretch
the senses and forget ourselves.

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

                …to define an ideal as something you can’t
                possibly have but can’t possibly help wanting to have.
                          - Robert Frost (“The Claims of Poetry”)

Feet slipping slightly, slick
tennis shoes on mossy cobbles,
loose sand and gravel vacuumed beneath,
the current tugs heavily at blue jeans
in the Middle Fork of the Tule River
to balance swimming with placing
a Western Coachman against
a riffling dark cut bank. Upstream,
fly line lashed behind you sparking water drops
into the dawn streaking between pines
and cedars along a river strewn
with boulders roaring, casting into
blinding light, half-century back –
your silhouette remains impatient grace.

Packing our biggest rainbows home
in creels wrapped damp with ferns,
we paraded them as men -
as word spread like a rock ‘n roll
from cabin to cabin buzzing
from transistors. A decade later,
I brought you Kristofferson on vinyl
and you taught me instead
the philosophy of ‘catch and release’.
This is how it goes, looking back:
broad vectors swept into directions
running parallel with time – with the
music and the good sense to angle
towards words we can set free.

                                                    - for JEG

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Topping-off the tank, six thousand gallons
set above the barn, troughs and our pickup
parked in an oak tree’s breeze, he suggests

that most people don’t know how to wait.
Twenty-five gallons per minute driven
by a generator, we swap a little gasoline

for a week of stockwater while we load
and feed hay three miles down the road –
and hurry back to keep from eroding

the mountain from its granite rocks,
we find this shade. Perhaps they wait
too long to go to bed and get up late –

and always late they never catch-up
and lose their minds along the way.
Alternately stealing glances uphill

between the Live Oaks, overflow pipe
empty, we light another cigarette to pursue
the practical balance of work with art.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

                                           Clearly it is time
                        To become disillusioned, each person to enter his soul’s desert
                        And look for God – having seen man.
                                           - Robinson Jeffers (“The Soul’s Desert”)

Relegated to rooms, little wonder humans
become dull and predictable, become old
within tight pens hung with many diversions

to keep them calm – little wonder comfort
and convenience rule this claustrophobe
with something new each day to work for

into the future. No man is immune, not
even the natives, not even the Great Blue
Heron fishing from steep, concrete sides

of the Friant-Kern Canal. Progress begets
fresh opportunities to be swept away,
new addictions to cling to as we turn

our backs on the inhospitable ground,
the jagged edge of granite lake reflections
we’d grind into gravel if it would pay.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I barely remember the man
who built the barns
tourists still stop to photograph,

his face now gone – rough-cut fir
in the rafters, mangers worn by horses,
their galvanized tin given-in to rust.

How fragile he must have been
here raised to live on the edge
of unimproved and steep ground

clear to Generals Sherman and Grant,
and beyond the Kaweahs and Kern
for just a few horses and cows.

We’ll never know his nightmares
nor how he notched and set the timbers
squared and measured in his dreams.

Inside dry, they weather storms
and the demons of changing times.
Lasting secrets only barns can tell.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Uplifted faces keep
track of the truck
up and down the road
in each pasture –
everywhere it goes.

They would follow
the diesel’s purr
            into forever.
            Empowered so
with such blind trust,
            a mortal must
            be careful not
to believe everything
            he thinks
            he knows.

Taken for granted,
he’ll discover disciples
with minds of their own.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1.

Off the hill behind the house, their home
since spring, sleek black heifers mill about
from under trees upon bleached feed

come evening. Talk around the trough
is brief with easy gestures, expectant mothers
fill with water, graze lazily and wait.

Together since calves, they mirror change
and remember in gazes – fire within
as they move, chatting idly about nothing.

2.

A coyote crosses in the distance,
not unseen as pups upcanyon practice
yips and yodeling. Lichened boulders

hold to the mountain, fractured stacks
of granite waiting for the decade, the
century to let go. A trail of baby quail

stir the dust, a gray hawk’s quiet glide
between oaks. Easy voices on the road
peddle down the creek towards home.

3.

And the dark swallows all. Tonight
lying naked in our bed exposed
to the sweet breath of a mowed lawn

upon our skins, to all the sounds
outside that find a part to play
in dreams, we close our eyes and

trust in the dog’s bark, the cow’s
bawl and the sun’s hot passion
to come and go again ‘til gone.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am hiding here on paper,
away from the news, from
conjecture and its endless
implications. I’d rather be
in the heart of an oak tree
and keep my distance –
keep my sanity providing
shade and listening
to the gossip of cows.

I’ve heard enough
from too many made-up
faces (botoxed to boot)
to buy their advertising
selling crisis and fear
to endure much more.

Bushtits flit by dozens
come evening when
we sprinkle the garden,
gray, small and busy
little bastards after bugs
I have to Google
to identify – quick
queries to busy people –
watching the real news.

Psaltriparus minimus

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our cousins would come
from Visalia to swim
in the summer heat, play

baseball against a barn door
backstop, grape canes waving
fresh green leaves beyond

the charred corrals my sister
and I damn-near burned down.
Howling sirens, engines ending

in Granddad’s yard. In the dark
I heard talk: my father’s voice
among the firemen, my mother’s

look I didn’t answer. We played
hard and waved the flag, sliced
cold red melon, cranked peach

ice cream in the evening
after hot dogs and potato salad,
then climbed to the shed roof

that leaked long beams of floating
dust when we took turns urging
the manure spreader’s wooden

tongue to talk, engaging brake
and gears as we imagined freedom.
On the shed’s shingled peak,

we’d jockey for position –
lookout for nails and splinters!
and beside trays of drying raisins,

watch rockets pop and shower
colored fire over orchards
from deep within dim lights of town.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It comes to me only now
with roots too deep to be
transplanted without shock
        that I wear the dust
        of where I’ve been
        upon my flesh
        and in my lungs
already – we are the one clod
that we inhabit and nurture
through drought, flood and time.

It comes to me only now
that we have worked quite well
together, our ebb and flow
        allowances as
        longtime lovers
        learn that they
        are part of the same
landscape – this fold of dirt
where the shine from ice on granite
is honeycombed with holes.

It comes to me only now
that time is short for natives
unless you are an oak
        making shade and acorns
        for the future
        adding more than
        you take away
from this earth – this tilted plain
of clay and rock – sacred places
under oaks where we can talk.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Summer white skies, clean sheets
of paper dreams listening for words
to rise over the Sierras, to slip

between the peaks and tumble down
canyons to settle in the sycamores –
like cattle, like the deer and elk

before us, to find a soft, sandy bed
in the shade. Reaching deeply into
dawn’s cool silence, I wait for a sign

of migration off blond hillsides,
for the sound of the first word
that gathers others, hearing only

the occasional and irregular tempo
of steel-shod hooves upon mangers –
saddle horses hoping for alfalfa hay

and a day off to write poetry. Long
heads listening in the labial folds
of granite rock, where they say

women were drawn by the moon -
where fine dirt and forgotten words
mix and stir beneath their feet.

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

                                                                       Snow
                    takes her print, curved half moons
                    cut by the heat of childhood in skin.
                                        - Deborah Miranda (“Petroglyph”)

A man must be careful
telling stories with the
same tone and ending.

Young men tire
with expected heroics
stretched into legends,

with the old and dead
stars too far gone
to muster much twinkling.

On the other side
of the sun, the earth
waits to be reborn

under rain and snow.
Always the other side
to begin again, again –

yet a man must be
careful telling stories
that never change.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 8:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Lost in Sulphur, small bunch
of young, third-calf cows
driven up-canyon to water –

sleek black hides snaking
a long tunnel of sycamores,
gray trunks and limbs reaching

out of a steep ravine, arched
and collapsing towards the light.
Through new eyes we explore

half-hearted notions up narrow
draws, deadfall detours that go
nowhere – learned on the way.

They begin to trust our low
grunts and groans of disapproval
to guide them, that punctuate

our conversation trailing behind.
The pause and wait as horses
watch, we become one calm

movement up and out of this
deep crevasse beneath a peak
above Ragle Springs leaking

into a moss-covered pond.
Hawks glide ahead and circle
back as if we were nothing.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One can awake in the same place
for the first time, each breath full
of an errant rain on old dirt drying

rushes senses through the silence,
stirring every canyon of the mind.
There is no one – nothing else

for moments – and you are alone
tasting, inhaling fresh-filtered light.
The hills could be brass castings

cracked with dark oak seams
beneath gray skies, soft at the surface
to a separate urgency, insulating

another world above gone mad,
gone wild. Old and young at once,
you see – watch the ship lift-off

and leave you to begin again
embracing possibilities you try
to cultivate throughout the day.

Pretty fresh, subject to online editing.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One day we awake in the machinery
watching gear heads turn wheels,
to the hum that we believe is silence –

constant and steady as an old ranch
generator between oil changes, between
repairs, and we leave it behind us

for the light, for the power, for the
juice we can make on our own.
We awake and wander off, far from

that dependable sound, for the flutter
of unseen wings – and when we sleep,
let dreams breathe in the arms of trees.

                                        for Liacita

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We know them by name
or short description – cattle,
horses, dogs and people –

trees, rocks and springs,
peaks, flats and creeks,
and the trails we found

to find them. Natives
notice details, our every
quirk and give us names

as well. An abbreviated
language, spoken mostly
with motion and what’s

on our mind. No one
wants trouble with so
much available outside.

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

We know it like a cloak uplifted,
revealing miles of almost anything
alive. Hidden insects feed and breed

on the border for birds and reptiles
ambushing one another to be a meal
for clever mammals – a tapestry

of comings and goings woven
into thickets and openings of wild
oats and fox tail cut by canyons

and creeks, centered in the summer
by waterholes. Here we are insulated
from a crazy world, the reckless

and insane savers of time, collectors
of seconds and minutes to spend
at the end of their strings.

The hills could be an empty-headed blond
or brown – lifeless and slick as ceramic
beneath the blaze that bakes our clay.

Or golden with patches of north-slope oaks
strung like meadows into the long, green
canopy of sycamores down the creek

to the Kaweah below the dam where
cattle find shade with reliable breezes
between grazing the half-light of dusk

and dawn, when each contrast seems
slow to change its expression, unhurried
in the broken light to dress and undress

away from the heat. Wild and domestic
dancing naked, making livings early and late –
depending on your summer nature.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since money’s been made
the crucible, the crucifix –
it’s been a hard row to hoe,

but my beloved Battle Mountain,
so disturbing, hawked
as an online slideshow.

Remember the flasks
on the shady back-deck
of Woodbridge Chardonnay

we consumed trying to
flabbergast her, before
dinner, before the Cabernet

and the slab of meat that
leaked on the fire, we
couldn’t out-crass her

style. But I don’t see it –
the deck, table and
barbeque in the pictures.

One wonders about people
with money: why and how
they let it pour

into watery concrete
around gossip rocks
in a metal shop floor.

I wonder at epiphanies
so removed from place,
the spirituality necessary

to build and sell
a sanctuary to their love
at their temporary

home. So many doors
encased in stone, so
small a space to house

an altar. The only thing
left unchanged is how
you delivered water.

                        - for h2ojohn

Credit: Internet listing by RExInet, RExBuy, RExChange and RExSold
Agents and Brokers - real estate and ranches for sale in the Sierras.
for more views see the link below:

http://www.rexinet.com/7052.html

Continue reading "BATTLE MOUNTAIN REVISTED, ONLINE" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Some days turn tenuous and futile,
backslide with the weather. Weeds grow,
springs dry, some cattle get away –

but rising early to write cultivates
a certain vanity. You could set
your watch by my father irrigating

eighty acres at seventy – like an ant
knowing minor accomplishment and
all the anthills of this planet, grains

of sand stacked like Egypt’s pyramids,
caravans packing seed for the whole.
How easy to forget that we are small

and overlooked, and why I wish
for you to keep a journal of words,
hear them resonate with your dreams –

each thread of rich detail woven
with the mundane and misunderstood,
the grizzly and the fuzzy truth

that embraces us with no guarantees.
Here the Muses of Hesiod reside –
simple shepherd, simple life.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was Johnny-this and Johnny-that
when I was in the field with men
with whiskers – blue bibs with brass buttons

– good lace-up boots to walk the furrows
behind them swamping fruit, the smells
of sweat and purple berries crushed

between the boxes stacked on the wagon,
or rinds of oranges bruised from sack to lug
the Okies picked when I was a boy.

East against an incessant crosswind, huge
flat hand that swept them off to California,
I aim towards the source of sound on my tongue,

its nasal resonance I smear on the page, drawn
to the Sirens’ lilt unraveled in ribbons – leafless
trees bent along the Interstate as if in welcome.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 4:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Already, I have succumbed to the temptation
of looking back, of retreating and rewriting
events only time has allowed me to see –

and only at this distance can the players shift
among themselves upon a fuzzy stage
to reappear in foggy memory, to come alive

and walk among us. I am missing parts
of your face, even of your smile, but not
the eyes that held me captive for decades

begun with my connecting high sierra stars
between us, proclaiming things – perhaps even
praying, back flat to shallow granite ground,

silhouettes of horses grazing, bell mare
shedding flies, other side of a lake.
My direct line and short-cut connection

across dark crystalline space. Ah…
the depth of forever, then and there, was
a very long time. On the uncomplicated

edge of innocence, it came early – a clear
view with magic possibilities – now sweet
the perspective and the luxury of age.

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

A man reveres them – bends mental knee,
bows his head, or uplifted grins with gods
he cannot see completely – as the glorious

moments linger for attention and admiration -
or so it seems as gravity pulls the pantleg,
as urgency retires its uneasiness.

There is so much we cannot say with words
despite wisecracking among the working
men and women around a bawling calf

stretched before the fire upon our altar.
Full glances lock, each calf turned up to find
its mother and its home. Quick and easy –

no time to ponder more than who we are –
or what we’ve done for generations, now
the why of it worth reverence one more time.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cottony clouds claim all but the near ridge,
Jody’s slope of poppies waiting to ignite
again with sun, popcorn flowers melt upon

the grass beneath a fuzzy blanket as day
sleeps in – quiet in the canyon. Huddled
in bunches to warm ground, fat cows and

calves rise late to graze up hillsides. No
bulls bellowing, no whines of 4-wheel drives
parading to the pines. Half-light holds

its breath as we gain an extra hour of peace –
as this gray Sabbath adds an extra day
to the other end of spring. We feed

the last sticks of live oak and manzanita
to the woodstove, stacks shrinking closer to
no place for rattlers to rest and relax.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s tough to spot progress close-up –
engraved details glinting, polished
silver conchos, buckles flashing
until they wear years of tarnish.

I oil a roping saddle for my son, dust
Black Widows from under fenders,
discover Shaver’s rough rosettes,
and saddle strings I’d forgotten

with new sheepskin. Repairs and
inventions, Bill like Kiskaddon’s ‘tinker’
in the stacks of stockyard broadsides
from Whitney’s salt house.

The leather, thirsty and stiff, drinks
as I remember more supple times –
white deerskin chinks he gave me,
lightweight, bloody from brandings

decades past. Agile on the ground,
when Robbin and I met at Thorne’s –
when Craig ran the ridgetops,
their cows in the mountains – we

rode with him when we dared. Dark
with olive oil, new billets and cinch,
the saddle breathes with life restored.
Ready to be remembered.

                                    - for Bill Shaver

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We have become the home
of quail, some years hundreds
come for water and the cover

of our presence – coveys of babies
herded alertly between adult
top-notches nodding, scolding

from poison oak to prickly pear
beside the trough’s puddled leak
I’ll fix someday – in the summer

usurping the driveway like picketers
milling progress to a standstill. Not
far off Cooper’s Hawk & Red Tail

watch, Bobcat upon a boulder.
So many sentries, so many eyes –
each twittering report repeated

in plump chatting movement: the long
run to fly, or quick explosion of blurred
birds – the thunderous whirring of short

wings, gray shards coasting all directions.
Rock piles calling, Over Here, Over here –
until the edge of evening closes in.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It’s supposed to be raining –
low spinning off the coast,
sucking southern moisture up
through thirsty California where
            it’s been a perfect year
            for grass in the foothills.
Yesterday’s soft horses groaning,
            men bemoaning
the size of Frank Ainley’s calves.

            Most understocked
            with the price of hay –
            white forget-me-nots
            claim the lightly grazed
            as poppies topping ridges
            burn holes in green.

            Low snow, slow rain
            more days than not
            saturating February
            with little runoff,
            a warm storm could
            test reservoirs and prayers
            for the Valley all week.

            Daylight drizzles on tall
nettles in the garden, drips
upon the first brass trumpets
of an orchestra of fiddleneck
jamming corners of the orchard.
Horehound spreads each
persistent, pungent leaf
            to gather moisture
            in the pasture –

            a man may need
            to spray weeds more
            than write poetry.

Perhaps not strictly a cultural phenomenon, but cattle and rural natives tend to complain, it seems, even in the light of plenty. No exception, I wonder if the negativity validates our activities as work, as an Anglo-Puritan stamp of approval. We come from stock that has had to tough it out, as many agricultural families continue to do – and many survive on guts and stoic toughness alone to become a model to perpetuate.

Continue reading "WILDFLOWERS & WEEDS" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

E. J. told the story
how he had cowboys ease
cows around the mountain
several times to please
the banker parked below

with that grin that had been there
several times, his eye a twinkling.

Cattle scattered to the steep
brush and rock, you had to call
them out of Greasy – cows, calves
and yearlings boiling out of canyons
            – his announcement rung
with prolonged octaves rolling upwards
            into unending echoes
            where the poppies on Sulphur
            cut into the deep blue.
Being there with Earl was too spiritual
for numbers, for young appraisers
to even remember
where in the hell they were.

Dad told the story
how Cal went broke farming in Exeter
in the 30s – then went to the bank
to manage their foreclosures
– learned the best ground and got it
to pay it’s way into a real estate
business.

It’s no secret: banks have no friends,
nor any real expertise to get a job done –
            and now that they’ve leant
            what they didn’t have,
damn little sympathy once again.

                                   for Jerry

Continue reading "NO SECRET" »

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

                …. a lot of little seedlings sprout
                                                     around it –
                              - Gary Snyder (“Among”)

A hundred acorns swell,
forty-more clumped
in a pocket gopher’s
pantry full to rise above
the grass – root down
quickly in the shade.

Every year they die by July,
but once, a hundred years ago
or so, the north slopes sprouted
beneath the old ones, grew up
thick as hair on a dog’s back.

A hundred stories start,
forty-more wander off
into the brush and rock.

A hundred years ago or so,
the flats were overrun
with poems from the old ones –
and from the granite slabs
a woman’s song, smooth
as a canyon wren’s shrill:

CALLING - Calling, calling call.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WRITER IN RESIDENCE

Words come like cattle into hay
from over the hill, out of the blue
chemise and manzanita drawn
down the length of dusty backs

almost always glad to see me.
Good alfalfa helps, but a man
moves among them like dancing,
locates his grace with deliberate steps
in bovine time, and he speaks
endearingly, a familiar voice

as they find comfort in a line.
When they are hungry,
I write like Bukowski, a frenzied
stampede bucking and kicking
the hard truth loose, words
that can hurt when they connect –
seldom safe to walk among
until the feeding’s done.

Visiting their feral households,
they are mostly curious –
bringing calves and checking-in
to see what I’m about.

                        for Joel & Gail

Up the steep stairs
she rears back and pulls
the harp’s neck to her
like a bareback rider’s
            deep seat
between her legs
before the nod.

She craves it –
flying fingered wings
plucking strings, spurring
Gaelic words that stir
the flesh. They are one –
her mane shook loose,
head thrown back in ecstasy,
she sings to the ceiling –
to heavens beyond
with brazen abandon
and we are moved

to a worn out bed
to make love.

                        for Keri Lynn

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You can see the question coming dressed in naked innocence
across pastoral meadows hemmed in pine,
or spot a calculator’s ambush reflecting in the distance
to multiply and weigh your bottom line

by the head or by the acre like a bank account in town
where lifeless numbers gather in a fog –
an empty string of zeros marking time upon this ground
like punchers in a picture catalog.

It’s enough for twenty bulls to keep us busy fixing fences,
enough to buck two hundred tons of hay,
enough to make us laugh at the crassest incidences,
and enough to get religion every day.

The answer doesn’t measure much until you sell it all,
repay the loans and mortgages for the chore
of living with what the weather left, living with the call
to keep improving what you’ve done before.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For the barn, I was taken at Lowes
by the ratings on the box
of an outdoor lamp made in China

that matched my every-night-for-twenty-years
bright-white bulb, a USA mercury vapor no one makes
anymore – not since Lumberjack was felled

before the Bush & Clinton years of plenty easy credit –
a 70-watt, a high-pressure sodium’s dull-amber glow
lost in the blackness like the far flame of a friend’s fire.

But with cool electric-blue, 50,000-hour LEDs to replace
the white-hot halogen spots that twinkled on & off defused
by too much heat in a knotty pine ceiling, my eyes choose

to rest easy upon the barn’s eave as I forgive the politics
of who made what, trying hard to replay the details
of the days and nights when we slept on the ground.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)