Big Washoe, 2010 Plus Six, Plus Seven

——— 2016, Sheep. Magpie. Mule deer. Mustang, colt, mustang...upon the ridge. Eagle's nest, bald. Oreo cows, in far field. Running baby cows. Sheep. Felled branch...100 mph winds. Controlled burn, left quiet; but not, as it turned out, without embers enough to catch to flames and race up the Sierra, down the Nevada. ... and humble a hundred million dollar homes. No cascades here, only browns blotting the green and white shoulders sitting quietly above the sopping Spring flats. We rounded the curving bend... Clockwise, if it can be said. And coasted where coyotes trot unawares or all-too aware; We aren’t aware which. Boats on trailers beside trailer homes each, it seems, with a Mom out front and a dog a kid two kids some kids with all who would and did trail her. ——— 2017, Sage, burned but not as offering. Cheatgrass paints the contours of these lands in ochre hues which begin in green, as things do and end in white, as things might. Rabbit Brush, too. Yellow-crowned. The winds blew, bringing shoulder-height snow to the peaks nearby, and a wet sprinkling to the valley. Dark snows hide the sentinel mountains, rain finds us - a smattering of splattering. The air cools, the leaves tremble. The moon is lost to me but not lost on me. We speak of Sky and Soil. We speak of alignment of body, with All. We speak of Stars, of David’s. We speak of new balls, first filled, then squeezed, then rolled, then bounced. We speak of Shamans, of Insubstantialities, of Believed Realities. Of Art. We drape ourselves in ghis, in lineage, in memory, in loss. We fend off the fears, the fears we each slow-boil. Terry, the spirit animal of anyone he greets, rolls in, alive to living, and changes clothes. Saints, a mountain of love, stands atop the wounded. The broken. The pained. A new home for him tomorrow. Tonight, he worries over insurance, which is always a worry of others. Which is never not a worry of self. He laughs. In his ease, he stews his existential concerns. “From the shoulder” and “rockin’” and ‘Skip’ and race and 8 weeks... in-the-hole- “Like living in a bathroom.” and 88 tats, HH. So not Chinese, this luck. We circumautomobile the waters. In the dark. He enlightens me. On race. On this land. On blood on hands. On his hands. On my hands. On all of the hands. He has no reservations, Quiet-Voiced. If he raises it, he will grow sad. The tears will follow. He remembers a hundred grand of trees a year... Taxless. Twenties. But that was the reservation he can’t be separate from. We, none of us, can.