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vocabulary clash

When you stay
vocabularies are ebbs and flows
bathed in power
change slowly
a perfect sine
hypnotically constant
you don't see them coming
then you are over the top
the barest comprehension of whence
a trend passed
almost unnoticed
 
When you go
vocabularies multiply exponentially
all radically different
there is no same
both definitions of quantum
transport you
new whelms
as utterly foreign
as suddenly the sole context
as the birth of a new universe

Turns

All the turns
False turns, too
South when rational wends west
The apparition was there when I looked
Gone when I looked again
We've too many times salvaged but tragedy
from the joy of is
The list of sometimes wins was short
We never turned away

What I can see

I can't see myself
but I can see you
I can't see what's close to me
but I can see through
to the blue and wide
on the other side

Bucket List Item Checked: Cattle Drive on a Harley

An old guy was sitting on his quad, sideways and sticking out half-way into the road, when I turned onto Gwin Mine Road as I rode the Fat Bob through Paloma today. Gwin Mine is a very small road that connects Paloma with Hwy 49. The name of the road changes to Middle Bar Road when it crosses the Pardee Channel. I stopped to ask the old guy on the quad about the quality of the road, which looks pretty rough, and if he thought if I could ride through to Hwy 49. I wanted to make sure it didn't turn into a dirt road. He said I could, but that I should wait for the cattle they were driving up the road.

I spent the next ten or fifteen minutes talking to "Gilbert" about land, Stockton, Mokelumne Hill, his sons' Road Kings and sundry other things, and eventually, sure enough, a team came driving a herd of 30-40 cattle right up the road towards us. There were two men on foot on either side snapping their whips, a truck in front, and a truck in back. Gwin Mine Road occupies an extremely narrow and confined corridor on our globe, with barbed wire fences close-in on both sides, so it was probably pretty easy to keep them together for most of the drive. But the road opens up dramatically at the Paloma Road intersection where several houses sit with their ample country yards, and three roads and a couple of driveways intersect.

They needed to turn the cattle onto Paloma Road. The cattle, with that limited part of their own mind they share, seemed to want rather to turn off the main path into any open side space. So the drivers were strategically positioning the trucks, the walkers and the quads to keep the cattle together, out of the yards and driveways, and to turn the herd down Palomo Road. (Never mind the whole "driving a herd of cattle down Paloma Road" thing.)

Then, the coolest thing happened. They asked me to move my bike to block a road, and to block the cattle turning that way. I had to wrestle the Fat Bob up a driveway, and park it sideways across the road between two fence posts. It was a bitch to turn it back around. But sure enough, Fatty and I got to "boo-yah" couple of cows back to the herd.

I yelled to the guy in the truck behind the herd that it was my first cattle drive. He grinned large and said, "Boring, huh?"

"Nah, it's pretty exciting the first time," I laughed.

I'm the only Harley rider I know ever actively to participate in a cattle drive... on the Harley!

As a postscript, the scenery on Gwin Mine Road and Middle Bar Road is absolutely gorgeous, totally beautiful. Gwin Mine Road sulks along a shelf above the Pardee Channel as the latter wends its way through the mountains. There is a red iron bridge midway between Paloma and Hwy 49 where you cross the channel. After that, it's called Middle Bar.

The cattle drive was a fitting prelude, however, because riding my Fatty up Gwin Mine Road and Middle Bar Road was like twenty miles of posting English in a western saddle on an angry, crippled steel mare. I averaged about 15 MPH.I shifted up into second about three times; otherwise, it was all first gear. Everything still free to shake is sore. The road's surface resembles a repeatedly paved hell from the time of the Solutreans. Those roads may, perhaps, be comfortably navigated on a hovercraft.

The ride was definitely worthwhile for the landscape, though.

Here is a map of the ride.
 .

Fifty Times. Plus One.

Fifty times I've stood, this angle, staring at the sun

Watching the wizened ravens claw their jet black reflection

Ever closer across the contrailed sky

It waxes more distant and weakened to my

Tired eyes, reddened and moist from dried up dreams

Face wrinkled and hair peppered gray
Shifting my weight from one weary leg to the other

Hoping the lesson is truth

On Sundays the poise I imagined evaporated

June repressed an earlier montage of color with a scaly, scalding green

And burned off the remnants of the sweet blossoms of spring

How many more times at this angle to stare at the sun

How many more claw marks will etch the shallows of these eyes

I could have walked away from fifty suns or the next one

Were I were older in my heart or younger in my soul

Were the sky darker

If hard were too hard

If the winter never turned to spring

With its aroma of petals soaked in their nectar and dew

If my autumn were never emblazoned in deep auburn joy

Fused with torrential shards of gold
Splayed across these mountainous waves

I could have walked away from fifty suns

In confusion and rage, tears and laughter, real or feigned

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps

Were I and I another

Certain is 

I shall face the light if it comes

just reread this. it's kinda gross. (11 april 2014)

Solutions

When someone comes to you with a solution,
it's a good idea to ask if it's for a problem you have.