Summer River

The meadow meets the river with a hand
That's flung out in the shallows, fingers wide
And buried in the bottom mud to hide
Old rings and wrinkles in the silt and sand.
The buckskin shrugs his shoulders and a shiver
Lets the skin all down his back become
A dusty ripple where the water from
The rain jet seeks its way back to the river.
I irrigate all summer, move the pipe
In awkward angles, twist the heavy wheel
To send the spring rain anywhere I feel.
I run this water like a line of type
That spells out grass and green. I am the one
Who makes grass grow, who makes the mountain
Water tame and chains it to a fountain.
I marry earth and water under summer sun.

Winter Flood

The gray rain pokes its pointed fingers deep
Into the crease and crack of rock, and wipes
The stone slabs clean of snow. The run-off stripes
The mountain. The run-off measures steep
And shallow and it fills the valley floor.
Irongate Dam hunches his earth-filled
Shoulders and crouches with his toenails drilled
Into the rock to hold the flood in store.
Out beyond the porch rail in Horse Creek
I see the water climbing up the slope
Where horses graze and squash vines grow and grope
In August and I know that it's the week
Of overflow. Too many cubic feet
In Irongate. They open up the sluice
And swell the winter river. What's the use
Of banks that disappear, of dams that sheet
Out overflow just when the water's high.
I watch the ripples lap and lick their way
Up to the trees, up to the summer day
When everything was green and gold and dry.

The Spring

The last frost melts first by the bank where this
Prudent river deposited delay.
Spring takes the back canyons with a quick kiss,
A kiss that takes the winter's breath away.
And it brings me out. I have been indoors
All winter, close to the fire. Now clinkers
Shudder in the grate. Now a bonfire roars
Out of the ashen sky and eyeblinkers
Find themselves outdoors. Now the beasts give birth.
I plan a garden. Everything that's new
Gets to know itself again. And the earth
Remembers what the river used to do.
The river relearns its old line, unrhymes
Itself and springs with a great frosty gout
Of water from its unmade bed. It climbs
The banks it built to keep the winter out.
I climb the hill to watch it. And I clean
The winter leavings from the pipes that bring
Clear water down to us. The iron screen
Is full of fall, I leave it full of spring.

Woodbutcher

Six cords of hardwood, live oak and madrone,
Three of soft fir to get the hardwood hot,
That's what I had to cut and what I got
On August mornings. I went up alone
On logging roads, took my fir where twisted
Culls lay, butts too skewed by wind and weather
For milled planks. I and my saw together
Sawed them to rounds. My wide wedge insisted
That these rounds split. Easy wood, the fir butt
Splashed with the logger's yellow C, all heft
And heave and haul. I cut culls to cords, left
Log landings open. Where fallers clear-cut
I'd find hardwoods standing, notch a neat vee
Into the trunk to guide my timber, set
The chewing chainsaw opposite, and let
It lay that log down. I saw and would see
What wood I wanted in my pickup bed.
If an oak rocked back, bound the bar, wedges
Crammed crease to crevice, easing the edges
Of my bright blades in and in. Overhead
The tree trembled as it found its soft heart
Seized by woodbutcher teeth and torn apart.

Cut Finger

Right to the bone, I sliced into the tip
Of my left index finger. I could feel
The flap of flesh, the blade, the blood, the heel
Of French bread on the board. I heard the drip
Of snow slow off the eaves. A two-hour trip
To town and stitches made no sense. To seal
This seam before the juices could congeal,
Restore the finger, ravel up the rip,
We wound, my wife and I, strip after strip
Of gauze and tape and gauze. And now it's real
And whole except it's learned how to conceal
Its heats and hurts. And now I have a chip
Of frozen flesh to carry on my hand,
A bit of death to own and understand.

Thunderstorm

The lightning stuttered, stumbled on the peaks.
We were outside the front door on the porch,
Me and my whining dogs. The wife’s bay mare
Snorted and stamped and shivered in her stall.
Then a smell of ironing, starchy scorch,
And the stark scarring of the cloudy cheeks
While thunder shouted here and everywhere.
The barndoor slammed shut in a gust of wind.
Rattling rain sprinkled and spritzed the green sheet
Of pasture, laid it down and pressed it flat.
The thunderstorm in passing paused. It pinned
The dripping hillside up to dry with neat
And fiery fingers, and it took my hat
And threw it down beside the stable wall.

I Ride Sophie

Raised by a 4-H girl, my wife’s bay mare
Had to get used to men. So I got dressed,
My cowboy boots and hat, my cowhide vest.
Sunup, I watched Sophie stop grazing, stare,
Roll a round eye. I snubbed her to a post,
Rubbed her down, fed her oats and a steel bit,
Bent her soft ears into the headstall, fit
Blanket and saddle on her glossy back.
She shuddered when I cinched the girthstrap hard,
Bracing my boot in her belly to hook
The buckle’s tang tight. I swung up. She shook
Her sable mane. We left the stable yard,
A rap of hoof on rock. I loosed the reins,
Scribbled her trembling flanks with my blunt spurs,
And clamped my legs as she stretched out on hers,
A panic gallop scrambling both our brains.
Close on our left the river raged below.
Sophie pretended that it wasn’t there.
All I could really do was sweat and swear
And pray we wouldn’t fall and she would slow.
A half mile down she did. I reined her in.
She shivered to a stop. I swung down. Back
We went, walking, to pull off sweaty tack,
Scrape cooling lather from her twitching skin,
Put her out to pasture, share what I’d done
With an embarrassed sky, a blushing sun.

Jack Fishes with a Pitchfork

In that September all Elk Creek was full
Of foam and froth and fish. All easy days
And icy nights saw salmon finding ways
To climb clear water, over stone and dull
Blunt boulder, lolling, looking for the lull
Of gravel bed and spawning ground, the haze
Of milt, egg, spasm, shudder and malaise.

These great gray fish end their lives here. They scull
On the surface. They sink to shiver, hull
And husk, spreading their seed and egg, displays
Of detumescence and decay. Jack splays
His legs and dips his pitchfork in to pull
These fasting fish up to his porch, to cull,
To kill. He cleans his catch, beheads, fillets,
To freeze and smoke. He tells me that it pays
To live right on the creek. I need to mull
This over, realize death always stands
Close by my creekside, pitchfork in his hands.

Bob and the Bear

Bob drove his jeep and trailer to the ledge
About four. The sun slid south on its way
Down behind Dragonback. The warm fall day
Was on its way to frost. Bob, on the edge
Of the loglanding, backed to the logfall,
To the fir culls that lined the drainage ditch.
Hard against the hillside he cut the switch,
Set the brakes, manhandled his splitting maul,
Bucking saw, gascan, wedges, from the back.
He set saw choke, jerked the rope to set saw
Choking on raw gas and oil. He set raw
Sound to bounce off the mountainside and stack
Itself like cordwood in the trembling air.
Raw chips spewed like those raw sounds. Rounds tumbled
Behind the trailer. Bob rested, grumbled,
Drained his canteen, looked up to see a bear,
Eyes like mean marbles, muzzle full of teeth
And salt slaver. He jumped for the jeep, slammed
Himself inside. The bear waddled, stood, crammed
His claws into whatever lay beneath
The cab and rocked. Bob swore. He had no gun.
Behind the trailer lay his saw, his wood,
Blocking backing. Void gaped before his hood.
He honked. The bear bashed his paw hard on one
Window. Bob honked again. The black bear scowled
And snuffled, snorted, stood and glared at him.
Bob stayed in, the bear out, the light grew dim,
Dusky. It was dark before the bear growled,
Grunted, left the landing. Bob threw the cut
Wood in the ditch, backed the trailer out, cursed,
Drove down the mountain, swore still as he nursed
His beer that weekend, bears would regret what
Bears had done. They didn’t. Nor did Bob who
Told everybody what I just told you.

Hay Delivery

Scott Valley baled hay on an old flat bed
Truck comes down the dirt driveway. With my pole
I rush to raise the electric wire, sole
Provider for the freezer in the shed.

Too late. Sixteen feet of hay snaps the wire.
Now I need my nippers from the tack room.
I bang the door open. A blazing bloom 
Of yellow jackets fills my face with fire.

No matter. Cut the power so I’m not toast.
Reconnect the line and check the freezer.
My poor wasp-stung ears hear the old geezer
As he backs again and again into the gate post
At the hay barn. I must sprint down the path
And guide him through the gate. Then we unload.
He leaves. The wire sways above the road.
I give my swollen face an ointment bath.

It’s a hundred and five, time for a cold
Beer and I’m almost 35 years old.

The Buckskin

First a wild three-year-old without a name.
Then he was Buck, gelded, broke to saddle,
Dark mane and tail, 16 hands, savvy, tame,
A horse any tenderfoot could straddle.
Calm and stolid he tolerated me.
He even liked the way I rode, unsure
Of my seat, off balance, always too free
With the carrot and sparing of the spur.

In the river pasture he and the mare
Sophie grazed away their summer.  On fall 
Nights, I’d fire my Winchester in the air.
Spotlights switched off, the rusty pick-ups all
Sped off full of drunk locals hunting deer
Amongst our horses. The carbine’s sharp cracks
Would scatter them. Next morning there were beer
Bottles in the ditch and muddy tire tracks.
Old Buck never realized his danger.

I recall a tangled tail, a muzzle
Stubble flecked with grey snubbed to the manger.
On December mornings he would nuzzle
His way into warm oats.  In August heat
He’d stand in the creek cooling his steel-shod feet.
I stand beside him in that mountain stream,
Our eyes half-closed, deep in a summer dream.

Splitting Rails

This high valley held illegal cedars,
Felled with plastic wedge and coughing chainsaw
By my friend who sold the rails. The law
Protected these red trees, these easy feeders
On the infinite. The Forest Service
Had agreed to overlook what they were
Meant to oversee so he and I were sure
Neither of us needed to be nervous.

Bob bucked the logs into ten-foot lengths.
I limbed, using my double-bit, started
The wedges down the trunks. I parted
Clean wood that smelled of slivers, steam and strength.
I drove with an eight-pound maul beveled wedges,
Steel and plastic, sinking into straight long
Stems until my cracks ran right to wrong
These trunks. I split all true swells to edges,
Wholes to halves, rounds to riven rails, all tense
Taut fit to splinter, slat and slash and fence.

The Hazel Baby Basket

Eighth-grader Mike offered a piece of art.
“My grandma made this for your new son Ted.”
A baby basket made by hand and heart.
“She wishes him a good long life,” he said.

A hazel basket something like a boat,
A present from the past in the same style
As Pharaoh’s handmaids made that time to float
Young Moses down the waters of the Nile.

Shoots bent to form an imitation womb,
A shelf for infant feet, later to be
A chair for toddlers, ample extra room
For diaper moss or Karuk history.

Our baby beached his boat on Klamath shore,
Snug in the last 10,000 years or more.

Owl Pellet

This owl, like me, likes to look back.
Unlike my rigid person, he
Can swivel his furred ear, his black
And golden eye to hear, to see,
Almost halfway round. He hunches,
Quasimodo, shrugs one slight shrug,
Then coughs remnants of his lunches
Where leafmold serves him as a rug.
No drunk's vomit this, no foul spew,
His dry retchings have been rounded,
Measured, parcelled, packed, reduced to
Pellets filled with what confounded
And dismayed his gut. I can find,
Within the discards, souvenirs
Of what had filled his maw and mind
These nights: some tiny skulls whose fears
Hadn't kept their erstwhile owners
Home. . . polished vertebrae. . . legbones. . .
Gifts from small reluctant donors,
Gifts this sleepy owl treats as loans.
Old hours fill me too until at last
I, like this drowsy owl, disgorge the past.