New Year’s dawning, cold,
winter branches reach skyward,
seeking the future.
Tag Archives: haiku
Storm Over Muddy Mountain
Thunderclouds roll in,
Bring rain to Muddy Mountain–
pelting us with hail.
In Like a Lamb
Hampshire ewes with her twin lambs
For us, rain, sleet, snow or shine, March always comes in like a lamb. We raise our own rams, Hampshire and Rambouillet, and the ewes start lambing March 1st. After the winter wait, the long months of lambs growing in the womb, we get to see these babies. With them lies our future. Their future, likewise, depends upon us. It is a long time between lambs on the ground and rams, dusted with iron oxide, jumping out of the horsetrailer to join the ewes, starting the cycle anew.
In the shed
Ladies in waiting, protected by guardian dog puppies
ewes and puppies
Oscar helping a lamb find a mom with a skin graft
Edgar and Oscar conferring
plenty of feed on hand
Oscar with his lambing crew, Tiarnan and Seamus
Babies in a box,
waiting for milk replacer,
or a new mama
Luis feeding a baby lamb
Sandman
Sandman, climbing
The stony sandman
Eternally strives to climb,
Rain or snow or shine.
Open winter
Today on the Red Desert
photo by Oscar Payano
Almost out of snow,
Last summer’s grass gives nurture,
Corn–but no water.
Year’s End haiku
Solstice sunset at Powder Flat
The sun swings southward
rising now just past the slope
of Flattop Mountain.
Solstice bringing short
days and long nights, at long last
finding its nadir,
And now, blessedly,
it will not seek a further
dark’ning nor shrinking
Of sunshine, daylit
hours. Now begins a dawning–
first gleams further north.
As light grows longer
morning shine extending time
and dusk now later
And later each day,
the world breathing in, and out
since Fall equinox
Led the moon and stars,
turning day into darkness,
stealing time each turn
Of the earth around
the sun, then leaning away
each revolution.
The pole star blazing
earlier as each nighttime
stole hours of sunshine.
Now we begin the
pendulum swinging northward,
toward the springtime,
It seeks a turning
Away from the magnet pull
That drew it southward.
Now the poles reverse
Morning’s rays creeping northward
Toward Sheep Mountain,
Toward equinox
when the heaven’s days and nights
will become equals.
But for now, solstice
in the winter, in the cold times
end times, renewal
We don’t sacrifice
animals. We don’t light fires
and burn Yuletide logs
Though we string shining
ropes that glitter and sparkle,
that glisten and glow
Yet we count the hours
for we know the sun returns
and the nighttime shrinks.
Our superstitions
replaced by certain science
daylight will rebound
Instead we sing songs
of praise, and adulation–
the birth of our Lord
Heralding the time
when the rising of the sun
fulfills the promise
Of the infant child
whose birth, foretold by shepherds,
attended by beasts
By cows, by donkeys,
by sheep bleating in the night
calling to the Babe
And we know by faith
and by our experience
that daylight returns.
So in the meantime
we sing and we celebrate,
this blessed season.
Almost Eclipse
Leaf stipled shadow
Ninety-eight percent,
turns out isn’t mostly dim,
but sorta smoky
Like those brush fire days
when blazes light up the range
and wind blows our way,
Dimming the mountains.
I expected more twilight–
maybe a few stars.
Still—through the glasses,
the moon slid over the sun,
leaving a crescent.
It grew chill, and still,
and leaf shadows lay stipled.
Not Totality.
Squaw Mountain at 11:03 a.m.
Squaw Mountain at 11:21 a.m.
11:38 a.m. “Totality”
Siobhan and lamb, ready for the eclipse!
Twin Lamb Haiku
Twin lambs on the ground,
Safe and sound with their mama,
Their whole life ahead.
Ladder Ranch
