Carolyn Dufurrena

Saddle Horses Invade Stackyard January 2005 Photo Carolyn Dufurrena

This is the time of year for starting colts on the ranch. The mare bands come in in November, but sorting and shipping of cattle is the first order of business in these weeks. By the first of the year, calves are weaned and sold, mother cows sorted to pastures or outside winter country. Then we can take time to look over the foal crop, decide which colts look like keepers, and begin the years-long process of starting saddle horses for the ranch. Weaner colts that learn the basics this winter won't be ridden for another year, and not finished for several more. Watching the babies grow into their individual personalities is a lot like raising children, and sometimes it seems like it takes almost as long!

Haiku for Starting Colts
January 1

Rain falls on tin roof
Red door creaks open slowly.
Turn colts into barn.

January 5

Two paints, a buckskin,
The two wild sorrel stud colts:
This afternoon’s class.

January 9

Nostrils flaring wide
Your every muscle trembling.
Relax and learn, colt.

Voice gentle always,
“Got a kink in your tail there?
Settle down now, Red.”

January 10

His ears flick forward.
Paint nuzzles for a mouthful,
Trusting his teacher.

Dragging halter rope,
Permit the brush down your flank,
Eat a bite of grain.

January 12

Tidy roan filly
Stubborn, taut, intelligent.
He saves her for last.

Turn the others out:
It’s time to start on Roanie.
Door shuts, light lowers.

Loop sails over neck.
She won’t be like the others.
Up, up she rises.

Hobble front and hind.
Your squealing will not help you:
Learn to stand, filly.

Quick as lightning’s bolt
Hind feet flash toward you.
“Did she get you Dad?”

“She didn’t hurt me.”
Turn away a moment, on
Next day’s purple shins.

Patience, patience now.
There is no place for anger
In a good teacher.

Supple willow wand
Drags burlap sacking
Over trembling haunches.

January 31

At last, she trusts him,
Stands quivering in hobbles.
Adrenalin fades.

Don’t lay your ears back!
It’s time to go to water.
Step out lightly, girl.

She leads easy now.
This season’s work is finished.
Until springtime, then.

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 11:24 AM | Permalink

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 5:58 PM | Permalink

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 5:58 PM | Permalink

Today there's an inch of old snow crust on the ground, and a brilliant blue sky outside. I wrote this poem after a Friday afternoon blizzard last winter, almost exactly a year ago, one of those basketball game days when people come from miles away to watch their third graders learn about sportsmanship-and survival.

After the Blizzard

The wind blew like a banshee last night.
I felt my way home in the gathering dark,
Searching the weak reflection of peeking marker posts
Through sand and slush, new snow piling in drifts over the summit.

Thirty miles of highway
A mere fantasy beneath the storm’s fury.
I sigh with relief when headlights show me
The willow fence
Leading me down the lane home.

Morning dawns in snow-muffled silence.

Ah, she thinks. A quiet Saturday,
A lapful of cats, a pot of good coffee.

But no. The cats are on the table,
journal in the briefcase
In the truck of the car,
Three-foot-deep drifted out on the road.

The phone rings early.
The coffee cools off.

Still, the winter hush says, today
Stay in your nest.

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 2:05 PM | Permalink

Winters in our neighborhood are long and cold, and the schoolkids need to shake their cabin fever. So there's basketball. With 21 students in our school in grades K-8, we've learned to be adaptable. Our school combines with another rural school in Fields, Oregon, to field the three teams that span the grades 3 through 8. Girls play with boys,and everybody plays where they're needed; second graders with fourth graders, fourth graders occasionally "playing up" with the 7th and 8th graders. Practices go long after dark on these short winter days, and the Friday games are always a couple-hour bus ride away, where kids from other rural schools combine, driving miles over mountain passes to meet friends they wouldn't see otherwise till rodeo season. Naturally, basketball pops up in the kids' poetry. Not all days are good ones:

Basketball Practice January 11

Yesterday was bad.
Running, I twisted my ankle.
I cannot move it.

Omar Villa, Grade 5

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 1:13 PM | Permalink

Katie in the Chicken Yard

She would sit there all day

Balanced on the rickety board
Laid across plastic buckets
The chickens use for roosting,

Watching
The young ones pecking their elders
The fluffing bawking mass of them

Cocking their cold orange eyes
At her four-year-old tallness.

Arms outstretched, she follows them
Around, around their small perimeter,
Long after the egg-gathering ritual is complete.
“Catch me a chicken, Grandma,”
she begs.

“Again, again!”

One last hen.
She reaches out,
tentative, to stroke soft feathers.

“Now, your turn.”
Apprehension wars with chicken lust
in her little girl eyes.
Circling, circling till the hen crouches,
Dares her to grasp with tiny sun-browned arms
That russet plumpness.

Small hands close gently.
She feels the hollow bones beneath
Echo the rapid heartbeat in her chest.
It takes eternity-and a moment-to master fear.

photos @ 2005 Linda Dufurrena

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 6:08 PM | Permalink

Almost all my writings have their beginnings in my journal, written in hours stolen from that time between dark night and daylight. I watch the deer ghost out of my garden, the last owls hunting swoop before he heads to the barn. Morning stars and the small yellow light at my elbow keep me company. Then the feed truck's motor rumbles across the yard; the phone starts ringing; the ranch wakes up. Chores and school work keep reflection on the proceedings of the universe to a minimum the rest of the day.

I have learned to write at all hours of the day and night, like Louis L'Amour who could follow the characters of a novel with his typewriter on his knees in LA traffic. But still I find the best ideas crystallize for me in that quiet time that feeds my soul, that blue hour between darkness and the dawn.

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 5:29 PM | Permalink