Taylor Graham: California Poets Part 8, Five Poems

Taylor Graham

January 8th, 2025

California Poets: Part VIII

Taylor Graham

Five Poems

ON THE TRAIL CAM

“Mountain Lion Drinking Right in front of my Trail Camera”

– Michael Outside on YouTube

The video shows in vibrant noonday color    

a bear easing himself into a desert pool,

luxuriating in this one saving

spot of moisture in a landscape of rocks

and drought. He stretches,

curls himself into the arms of this lover,

Water, as if he’d never leave her.

But then

motion stops; shifts to fox, then raccoon

come for quicker thirsty gulps.

The deer must be brief, always

on alert because

here comes cougar

long, tawny and lank, assured of his place,

dipping his muzzle into Earth’s life-

blood – tentatively then

like my black cat, settling low on haunches

for the long lapping and swallowing.

He won’t be pressed.

I feel him relaxing into this

communion with existence. I wish

I could share his ease

without thinking

of him stalking me on the trail.

HIGH POINT

Mokelumne Wilderness

At the portal-edge

between granite-lava

vista over

peaks and canyons

and sky ripping

stormclouds

at their lightning seams,

thunder

shaking earth

underfoot –

time to get down the trail

quick as I can –

But wait!

Click this moment

to memory replay - replay

electric

in brain & pulse

for life.

SALVAGE

Muscle-memory knows all the curves.

Turnoff, logging road; canyon where it started,

mid-August – fire’s footprint

changing direction at a giant’s whim.

Now it’s cold, December:

Let Loki out of the car.

What’s dead ash and char to a dog?

No people, no cars, no fences.

Pine log fired shiny-black as dragon scales.

Manmade artefact: volume of metal

leaves splayed open, each unreadable page

rings silver.

Loki shows me fresh deer prints.

In midst of burn, a stringer of manzanita,

deer-brush, ponderosa pine, oak, and incense

cedar – untouched green. Alive.

ASPEN CARVINGS

            Basque arborglyphs, High Sierra

A long drive by car up the mountain

to where an old-time sheepherder drove his flock –

lonely summers

for a migrant from across the sea,

with only his dog, maybe a packhorse,

and a thousand sheep.

While the flock grazed meadow,

did it comfort him

to carve his presence into aspen bark?

initials and a date;

a hummingbird with giant blossom;

a lizard, a frog,

a cougar half-crouched

etched then scabbed in tree-skin over time,

never to pounce on its prey.

THE LOST DOG

He appears unbidden from oak-woods,

buckeye, and wild plum. Hill, swale, field,

so many greens, wildflower stars.

Burnished copper-black guard-hairs

soft as a cat’s – he bounds toward me,

attack of a wild beast

but for the smile of Shepherd-dog jaws.

Knock-hock dancer,

he wants to dance with me.

I keep walking, past a pit I dug to bury

him. It lies open, filling what can’t contain him

with dry leaves.

Leaf fall like ashes making mulch.

Keep walking.

There he is again, floating

long-legged as on wings, inviting

me to the dance.

Author Bio:

For 40 years Taylor Graham has lived in rural El Dorado County, California, and in 2016 became the County’s inaugural Poet Laureate. For over 35 years she and her late husband, Hatch (a forester/wildlife biologist), trained their dogs for search-and-rescue and responded as volunteers to hundreds of searches for lost people, including the Mexico City Earthquake of 1985. She now lives with her shepherd-husky dog, Otis, and black cat, Latches; the daily routine includes a trail-walk with Otis. She leads poetry workshops at local libraries (Tuesday at Two every week in Placerville and Thursdays at Two twice a month in Georgetown), in addition to quarterly poetry walk/workshops at American River Conservancy’s Wakamatsu Farm.

Her poems have appeared in International Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, New York Quarterly, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and in the anthologies California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University), Villanelles (Everyman’s Library), and California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology.  Her collection The Downstairs Dance Floor was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize from Texas Review Press. Her latest books include Uplift and Windows of Time and Place: Poems of El Dorado County (both from Cold River Press) and Walking the Bones (Hot Pepper Press).

She holds a B.A in German with French minor from California Lutheran University, and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from University of Southern California.