Carolyn Dufurrena

Too tired to think, he's
Up every midnight
for three weeks now.
Checking the reservoir,
as though our relentless scrutiny
would keep the boulders from rolling.

Snatches a few minutes of quiet
in the afternoon,
too twitchy to sleep.

Sweeping the back porch, I pause
to gather in the sound of
river roaring under the bridge.

A brown whirlpool spins in the meadow
where the culvert should be.

Water creeps across the yard
burying the road
in rippling silver,
dangerous beauty encroaching.

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 9:32 AM | Permalink

Local cowboy hydroengineers made a good try at managing the flooding spillway, but one bale too many somehow floated the whole works down the creek. Lots of water, more on the way, but there are no fish in the alfalfa fields yet.

Quinn River Bridge in flood, April 27

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 1:23 PM | Permalink

The reservoir's up again.
Took one of those one-ton bales
on down the channel
Last night
and washin' like hell right now.

Looks like she's gonna go today.

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 7:38 AM | Permalink

Sunday afternoon,
get an iron on those babies, turn out next week.
All the kids are roping
Slurping lemonade between
throwing those big calves.
Growing up fast, all of 'em.

I see Zack jump up, yell at his sister,
"Julia, get over here and sit on this calf's head!"
He doesn't want to cause another wreck
in the middle of
family branding.
His long bronc-rider legs
take him around the back side of the trailer
faster than I can turn around.

I see you over there
Down on your knees
Across the lot,
Face gray in the spring wind.

See the horse, head high
His black mane flying like a victory flag
over an empty saddle.

In a minute, we're all there,
Except the kids, still back in the bunch,
Holding the herd,
Their ropes quiet,
Trying to see what happened.

Only a moment, twenty yards away,
but it doesn't look good.

They catch that renegade,
and Zack airs him out;
still mad about something,
he's ready to try it again.

You finish the day, rope lots of calves
on that bay horse,
but your face is gray
for a long time.

Three highballs into the evening
You still can't move, or breathe.
"Just wasn't payin' attention.
Switchin' ropes, dropped my reins,
If it'd been you or one of the kids,
I'd a given you hell
for what I did."

"Picked my spot too
But I still landed like a sack of shit."

Disgusted and sore, but mostly dismayed:
The years betray
what you know about yourself,
Bucked off today,
A month shy of 50.

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 7:08 AM | Permalink

Bringing the mares home is another one of those things that's slipped a bit this year: we're nearly three weeks late bring the mares and their foals over from their winter pasture, and what would have been easy three weeks ago, with four wobbly-legged babies, is going to be a lot bigger project this spring. Fourteen foals now at Bog Hot, and we're still in hell-or-high-water mode here at the home ranch. Thunderstorms every other day, and green green grass in the fields. But this is how it was last year.

Bog Hot Meadow
April 10

Silence cocoons the morning
Stretches the horizon
Snow on ridges
Blue with distance
Coiling ribbon of dust
Across the valley:
An invisible traveler
Trundling to town.

The ticking of grass growing
Marks the ripening day.

Finally
A ripple in the wavering distance
A russet ribbon of motion
slips in and out of view
As though parting the silent universe between earth and sky.

Shimmer resolves to form
Horses
Moving fast across the curve of earth
Parsing the soundless space
Between sage and greasewood.

Their flashing legs
Dance an invisible trail
Up the desert.

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 6:54 AM | Permalink

Bilk Creek Reservoir looks calm in the spring evening, but water levels are dangerously high. More rain and snow on the way, and a south wind blowing. CKD photo.

After a week of rain and slushy snow, the spillway at the reservoir started to let go this week. I watched as gravel bars built and disappeared along the roaring channel; great slumping masses of the spillway wall woofed down into the torrent. Rolling boulders clacked along the channel, three-foot high sagebrush tumbling with them. Within minutes, the new slide would wash away, and pebbles would start to roll from another steep spot of the saturated bank.
We started moving cows from the fields down below, pulled the boards in the irrigating dams, crossing our fingers, letting all the water go down there at the farm. The brothers hauled boulders as big as they could carry, one at a time in their hip waders across the spillway, building rock weirs to divert the strongest of the current to the other side. By an hour before sunset , Todd showed up from town with a Track-Hoe, massive wierd cross between a tank and a mechanical T-Rex, and Hank met him with a truckload of one-ton bales and the tractor. In the fading light, Todd ever so gently nudged the great blocks of alfalfa into the flood, saving us for the moment from a fate that, this year, seems almost inevitable.

Bilk Creek Spillway, April 8. CKD photo.

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 4:28 PM | Permalink

Snow on the green grass.
A bright wind riffles through
Puddles in the yard.

No foals in the mare bands yet: easier to move them now
from their winter pasture,
but the hills are white again.
It's still winter-is it?

A flock of bluebirds flashed through two weeks ago,
Their impossible indigo a miracle of color against the desert grays.

Cats and saddle horses sluff a bit of winter hair,
then stand shivering in a north wind.

My foolish daffodils
strain toward a rowdy sky
that will as likely crush them
under a foot of new snow tonight.

Heat lamps on in the shed,
but no little white bodies curl on beds of warm yellow straw.
Not yet.

We cross our fingers,
hoping to shear before the lambs come.

Hank shakes his head, imagining the nightmare:
a hundred babies birthing in the chutes,
wandering lost on wobbling legs
in the milling crowd
of the shearing pens.

Five days. Maybe.
Sheep shearers stuck in Eureka
in the storm,

Another one of April's little jokes.

Posted by Carolyn Dufurrena at 8:58 AM | Permalink