Field Flowers
—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA
DAWNING TO THE WORLD
Still dark, the only light is the modem. Boot-up the cipher machine. Is this how you wanted to start your day? Bad connection to the outer world < processing… please wait … > Nothing finishes; nothing changes except, out the glass-pane window, black dims imperceptibly to gray, light limns the east horizon. Believe in color, taste, scent. Get up, walk out your door. Say good morning to the world.
ridgeline’s silhouette,
blue oaks imagine a breeze—
first note of bird song
Joss Sticks (Narcissus)
JANUARY NEWS
The TV boils with intrigue—
government shutdown or build us inside
our wall; is Justice subverting,
or our leaders lying? I shut
the TV off, scrape off my windshield,
drive to poetry. On the way,
a hundred joss-sticks overnight
blossomed from underground—brighter,
more hopeful than words.
Fungus Crown
COLD KINGDOM
Behind suburban fences, stringers of pine,
thickets of scrub; oak hills cloaked in green.
Look lower, closer. They’re erupting
in winter grasses, crowning through leaf
decay. Fleshy beauties—mushrooms,
toadstools. They beckon, try to persuade:
touch me, taste. Absolute white, drained of
the tinge of life, but alive. Red-orange,
burnt bronze, lavender. This one, gilled in
ochre, opening like a goblet filled with rain
to mirror sky. Don’t drink that blue.
We’re foreigners to this life-form,
we don’t know the language. Rebirth
in rot. Keep your hands in your pockets.
Super Blueblood
MOONRISE
It’s a soft-tire moon fogged as memory
but we’ve made it home—at least as far
as the ranch gate which you’re opening
in the blind of our headlights.
Moon of flat-tire fancies over this little
valley held tight between its ridges.
Now we’re through the gate, tires
grumbling up the rutty drive.
We didn’t leave the porch light on.
Small dark house soft-lit by moon
behind its haze of cloud. Moonlight
coming in the windows
just like someone fixed its flat.
A lot of memories in moonlight.
January Creek
LIFE AS IMPROV, AS WATER
Snowmelt from upcountry—
flumed, ditched, piped; or running
free downriver to the lake,
the outflow. And he ran free too,
finding adventure on the run;
improv like a drum, a willow flute.
He knew the mountain, explored
what man had made of it.
Old mine shafts long abandoned,
left behind; hidden treasure,
air and water caught for just a time
underground. So much to learn,
to find for himself. Leaving
in the morning he might
become the stream flowing away,
coming back clean as rain.
Fungus Breakdown
COPPA HEMBO
from the Sacramento Daily Union, Apr. 7, 1892
A young brave like the others but he’d earned
no proper name yet, to give him presence
in the tribe. Who could he be? looking to prove
himself in the world—forward in the file
of young braves walking that desolate fold
of boulder-toothed canyon. Sudden
the Grizzly. His companions ran. Was he
too slow, or just too close? Fell into
the bear’s trap-jaws, he was left for dead.
Bear-mangled, he survived. The bear did not.
He wore its scars its skin back to his village.
Reborn with a new name: Grizzly Fighter.
In a secret place he must have kept the bear,
as the rest of his earthly life he fought for peace.
Cow Camp
Today’s LittleNip:
NOTES FROM THE COW CAMP, AUGUST
—Taylor Graham
There’s blessing in the washing of hands
and face in water that knows its gravity
from snowbank, through willow thicket
waking with birds; down rocks to the cold
ford. Pull on trousers, shirt, windbreaker
like new skin. Ice on the bucket. Cup
your hands, shiver and drink to sun that
shocks the rock ridge to life.
____________________
Big thanks to Taylor Graham for today’s fine poetry and photos from our part of the state! Look below for the photo/poster she found in a store window up here in Placerville. (Click on it once to make it more legible.) Here, kitty kitty kitty…
For poetry tonight, check out Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento for features and open mic, 8pm. Free, but please partake of Art Luna’s fine food and libations. Or head down to Old Sac to hear Terry Moore and Brandy Borders read, plus music, at Laughs Unlimited. That’s Poetic Justice 2018, 8:30-10pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
—Medusa
There’s blessing in the washing of hands
and face in water that knows its gravity
from snowbank, through willow thicket
waking with birds; down rocks to the cold
ford. Pull on trousers, shirt, windbreaker
like new skin. Ice on the bucket. Cup
your hands, shiver and drink to sun that
shocks the rock ridge to life.
____________________
Big thanks to Taylor Graham for today’s fine poetry and photos from our part of the state! Look below for the photo/poster she found in a store window up here in Placerville. (Click on it once to make it more legible.) Here, kitty kitty kitty…
For poetry tonight, check out Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento for features and open mic, 8pm. Free, but please partake of Art Luna’s fine food and libations. Or head down to Old Sac to hear Terry Moore and Brandy Borders read, plus music, at Laughs Unlimited. That’s Poetic Justice 2018, 8:30-10pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
—Medusa
—Photo by Taylor Graham
(Celebrate poetry!)
Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.
