California Gold

By Susan Arcady Barich

Clouds skitter west off the Pacific Ocean,

Like so many shining Cutty Sarks on the blue sea

Headed for California's gold country

Bearing life-giving water to birth the crops,

To waken vineyards,

To sate Sequoias,

To guide fishes to the sea,

To quench cities and towns,

Our Manna from Heaven.

Clouds sail over my head,

And to the east they ram into the Sierra Nevada

And explode into the sky

In every shade of white, gray, silver and black,

Stacked and billowing, one on top of another,

As they climb up and above the peaks and rise on the wind

Five-thousand, seven-thousand, twelve-thousand,

To hit the wind sheer at thirty-thousand feet.

The sheer skims eastward at 200 miles per hour,

Is lifted by the rising ships,

Then cascades over them

Like water crashing over Yosemite's valley wall.

As it falls, the flow begins to curl and accelerate,

An eddy in the sky, spinning 600 miles per hour.

Woe be to the aeronaut who passes through the vortex,

Sending small craft crashing to the ground and

Passengers on the wide-bodied into the overhead bins.

But today the blizzard is passed,

A gray pal lies between me and the blue.

I hear a cry and look up to see a Coopers hawk drifting above me

Looking for food after three days of driving rain.

At my feet, green velvet fills sidewalk seams.

Orange lichen colors cracks in the street.

Fred Fungus and Mary Moss emerge on the sidewalk

As quarter-size patches of green-gray lichen on the concrete.

The storm has left eleven feet of snow in the high country.

Snow, water stored brilliantly in winter

To flow by summer and fall into rivers and reservoirs.

The news calls this storm a "monster."

But native Californians know better.

We revere the storm as the essential fleet bearing cargo

More precious than gold.

West Point at the Confluence

By Linda Toren

Our town is lost

in the mountain reaches

of a lightly populated county.

We don’t belong anywhere

but to ourselves

a hideaway of artists

and other loners

taking care of each other.

Fortunate in the scheme of life

our town forgotten

then remembered

once in a while.

We are not a destination

unless a wrong turn

heads you up the mountain

where wagons rolled along

a dirt road single file, east

along the riverbank.

In the Long-Before-Time

home to Mi-wuk—the people—

their way of life compatible with

meh weh, ep lolly, oo yah

hee lee chah, ah su mah tee.

All still here.

Once a mining town

with a thousand Chinese.

Then a timber town—lumberjacks

led by a “bull of the woods”.

Now, West Point is still far away

from anywhere—

safe haven for us country folk.

If you arrive by accident—

stop at the café, top of Main Street,

find the library near the school,

visit the Community Garden or

wait until Lumberjack Day

when far and wide the parade

is a shining star of the year.

Reality is enough food for thought—

wood split in the shed,

chickens cluck about sunshine,

ravens wheel on the wind.

The smell after rain

beyond pungent,

leaves a chorus of wonder

as humus clarifies soil.

One can taste how life

disintegrates and renews

here, in the wild foothills.

car sanctuary

By Pru Starr

I park my white Lexus sedan in Mokelumne River’s Middle Fork parking lot where Hwy 49 winds over the last of winter’s whitewater push through rocks

Miwuk people gather branches from this spot to weave willow baskets where purple sweet pea vines yellow broom and Valley Oaks steeply climb

today’s goldpanner squatted in water to capture silt

then sits in the lot staring ahead in his white Hundai Sonata

packed with river pails

strangers with seatbelts securely fastened in our fuel horsepower Conestoga cocoons

imagine time’s thread which led our white cars to precisely this destination

maybe he descended from 1849’ers who crossed the Sierra Nevada on foot

he strives for the same gold

my story involves gasoline and tires through two lane highways

paved over immigrant trails

nothing to do with willow baskets

but still I sit in our same place

a moment cherished by Lexus me without knowing what Hundai considers

potential for gold blood of the sun the name ancients gave ore

Mokelumne snowmelt courses spring runoff downhill

unaware of my perceived significance

In a Pie-shaped County

By Ty Childress

Murphy’s Law
A raven’s caw
A feral cat’s paw

Milky Way at night
Lover’s delight
See comets in flight

On Tanglefoot Trail
It’s starting to hail
O’er mount and dale

Sheep in the street
With cloven feet
And swollen teat

Long way to town
Then homeward bound
Past a barking pound

San Andreas trembler
I can’t remember
A shakier September

Without a doubt
A twisty route
For a West Point scout

Miwoks still
See blood spill
Still pay that bill

I could do this all day
Write verses this way
They won’t go away

Calaveras — My Place of Little Skulls

By Chrys Mollett

I hate you. I refuse you. I don’t want to be here!
But rocky home you are. Today. Yesterday. And now for many a year.
Your precious snowfall. Your glorious springtime. Your lakes. Your rivers running clear.
I cannot deny the power you have over me.
Again and again, I surrender.

Dry, rocky soils. Red as Ponderosa pinecones
After the squirrels have eaten, now kindling for an honest fire.
But Fire, Wildfire! – A threat that never leaves us…
And if that fire takes my home, it will leave me barren, homeless,
And as poor as the original soil.

I have built my place here, where I live close and see far.
Half metal trailer box, and half this Chrystine Chapel,
Hand-hewn and milled just up highway 4.
Majestic beams have dried and sheltered me
These long and lonely, perfect years.

Great Spirit, give me time – more time to live and breathe here!
Give me time to know you and learn again and again to love you.
For you have stolen my many dreams of softer, greener pastures.
You have replaced those dreams with the bravest reality.
You chasten, you teach, you dried my skin, taught me to make and to grow what I need,
And you have loved me like no other.

Untitled

By Marcia Adams

Understory

the area below a forest canopy

Walk with me into a Mokelumne wilderness

where I can show you how to love even

the surprising scent of Mountain Misery.

We will explore a natural Calaveras stand

of dry snags and saw timber, learn to decipher

heartwood rings, the understory of old skulls.

Listen close for the ghosts of long gone lumber

jacks, soft shift whistles from Wilseyville's mill,

as snow thaw water rushes down the Licking Fork.

Imagine Blue Mountain's base all ablaze in buttercups,

a wizened coyote shape-shifter full of strange old stories

about those upper story women who fell for him.