After nearly none last year, it hit suddenly and dramatically last night: cold, intense, beautiful.
canyon country
Cutting Yucca
Yucca will take over if you let it.
Every summer after the blooms dry, I tackle them with long,
red-handled clippers and cut off long stalks.
Not bothering to put on boots, I set out in black and grey Chacos,
cutting stalks in places unreachable by tractor.
I climb down to a rough area, open these long, red-handled clippers,
chop off the dead blossoms, then look down.
She lies there, her body slightly bigger than the size of my upper arm,
fat, not long.
A snake stretched out, only 1/8 inch from the front of my Chacos.
I look again. Crap. She’s a rattlesnake, one of those short,
stout prairie rattlers, perfectly blending with the grey and brown
rocks and soil.
Slowly, I inch backward, taking care not to fall on the steep slope.
When several feet away, I run to the barn, grab two shovels off their hooks,
run back. She’s gone. I search everywhere around.
I never find her.
This Evening
Raging wind gone still
Mockingbird carols to Sunset
Dusk whispers to Night
Flowers–Texas Panhandle Tough
In spite of only one inch of rain since last autumn, many flowers persist: sundrops, black foot daisies, chocolate flowers, wine cups, primrose, desert (Mexican) birds of paradise, red yucca, salvia, catmint, native grasses, milkweed. I took these photos after feeding the horses this morning.
Plains Indian Artifacts–Beaded Moccasins
Last evening I attended a new exhibit at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. The exhibit featured moccasins, paintings, and various artifacts made by different Great Plains tribes, including a headdress worn by Quanah Parker. The exhibit also contains many old photographs. A number of Comanches were present including a lady over 100 years old.
After I left the exhibit, I kept thinking about it and wondered how current Comanches might feel when they come to something like this which in many ways honors them but also displays a past that will never return. While contemplating, I wrote this poem about what I saw.
Beaded moccasins,
moons of work.
Ceremonial beauty,
now encased in glass, labelled, dated by someone’s guess,
for strangers who believe in a strange god,
desecrate the land,
waste invaluable water,
kill bears for sport.
Weep
Wait
Palo Duro Canyon, Comanche Country, where they made their last stand and were forced to go to a reservation in Oklahoma after federal troops killed over a thousand of their horses.
Iris Tough
In spite of less than 3/4 inch rain since last fall and minimal watering from the 400 foot deep well, iris bloom everywhere–even in unamended caliche, a glorious reminder of nature’s resilience.
When I thinned these a couple of years ago, I had so many that I stuck them everywhere, even here at the end of the driveway. I have watered them only once.
A friend gave me just one. I planted it by the barn among others of the color in the first photo. In spite of the drought they multiplied a lot this past year. Probably all the rain from last summer helped before it quit raining.
I planted these a couple of years ago in front of the barn. I watered them a few times this spring but none during the winter. This particular iris reblooms in the fall and multiplies so fast it is difficult to keep up with separating it.
Possibly because of their location by the retaining wall near the barn facing west, these are always the first to bloom. I did water them a couple of times this spring. Insects have found them.
Day 127
Tan grass stretches miles and miles as far as eyes can see.
The water in the indigo bird bath evaporates in one day.
Playa lakes, full last summer, surrounded then in emerald grass, lay waterless.
Thirty-five miles an hour winds create fog-like clouds of dust across the horizon.
Grit, wind hurled, buffets cars and trucks driving down the long, straight highways.
Dust-fed sunrises and sunsets clad skies in orange, hot pink, vermillion, violet, mauve.
Day 127 with no measurable precipitation.
Note: I wrote this ten days ago. That evening it rained .01 inches. None since then. We are approaching four months with just that .01 inches, nothing more. Every time it warms and the winds come, the weather forecast mentions high fire danger. All counties and state parks near here have burn bans. March is a windy month.
Sunday Poem-Puma I
“An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.” Martin Buber
My neighbor walked out her door
found a puma lying on the lawn.
Puma rose, stretched, disappeared.
At night when I open my gate
I wonder if she lurks
behind the cedar trees,
pounce ready.
My daughter dreams puma dreams:
a puma chases her up a tree.
There are no trees here big enough to climb.
A Zuni puma fetish guards my sleep.
I run with puma
Night wild
Free.
I scream and howl
Moonstruck
Bloodborn.
I hike the canyon
stroll around my house
look for puma tracks.
I see none.
I would rather die by puma
than in a car wreck.
Note: This is the first in a series of Puma Poems in my book “On the Rim of Wonder”.
Sunday Poem–Choose
“Most people are about as happy as they
make up their minds to be.” Abraham Lincoln
When I was twenty something, I chose happiness, not the sappy, syrupy, cheery, but a deeper joy of cherishing the small, the unique, the everyday, smiling with sunsets, the song of the mockingbird in spring, horses running free, the nearly invisible bobcat climbing the canyon wall, the taste of fine coffee at the first wakeful moments in the morning, cooking for friends, taking a “property walk” with my grandson, laughing with the teenagers I teach. I am driven to do little–obsessions, compulsions do not run me. I choose. Choose life, choose joy, or choose whining, choose lamenting. Choose!! Be who you want to be; do what you want to do.
Note: this is a poem from my book, “On the Rim of Wonder”.
Sunrise
Autumn’s beauty
Sunrise
Rim of Wonder
