Taylor Graham: California Poets Part 8, Five Poems

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.

Interview

March 4th, 2025

California Poets Interview Series:

Taylor Graham, Poet, Volunteer Search-and-Rescue Dog Handler

interviewed by David Garyan

DG: I’d like to begin with your work in training German Shepherds for search and rescue missions, something you’ve done for more than 40 years. In fact, you’ve also written poetry about these experiences. Can you talk about some of the preparation that dogs undergo along with the places you’ve been that have influenced your poetry?

TG: I haven’t gone on searches for some years now, but still train my dog to find people – it gets into the blood. I grew up horse crazy, never had a dog or knew anything about dogs until I met Hatch, my late husband. We got married and had to have a German Shepherd, and then we were breeding, doing obedience, tracking, then search and rescue. I loved SAR because it was an adventure and it taught me so much. “Believe Your Dog!” can be a hard thing for humans.

Our puppies got lots of handling from day 1. At 7-8 weeks they started hide and seek – one of us would run a short distance calling the pup’s name, then duck behind something. When the pup made its find, it was party time – treats, pats & rubbing, huge praise. It became the favorite thing, finding people – better than food or toys. We liked a stick reward, fetch & tug. When my first dog, Prissy, found a comatose woman on a mountainside, I was busy on the radio calling for medics and doing what I could for the woman. A stick was nearby, I handed it to Prissy, “Good! Dog!!” No stick game, but she carried it proudly for the rest of the day. It was her trophy.

Search dogs get lots of training besides search, which is pretty instinctive. Socialization to all sorts of people, places, situations; we were always looking for new experiences. Obedience, including loading half a dozen or more handlers’ dogs in the back of a pickup, unsupervised for a ride on a bumpy road. The dogs might not be friends, but they have to get along. Agility, not a fastest-time race but slow careful negotiating unsteady surfaces like disaster rubble; climbing ladders, being lowered in harness with handler into pits or on rappel down cliffs.

The dogs show me things I would have missed, like the night we were searching for two little boys who didn’t get home from school. In an industrial-type part of town my dog alerted on a reefer. I opened the door – a large cat hissed at me. Sardy alerted on a cat! It was around midnight, way past my bedtime. I reported back to the substation but couldn’t sleep. Sardy doesn’t alert on cats! At dawn we were back at the reefer; forget the cat. I opened the door, we walked in. A jumble of stuff – and at the far end, from the edge of some fabric, a tiny live hand. I rousted the boys out, told them my dog would guard to make sure they stayed right there. No one answered my radio back at the substation, all still asleep. I ran back to get the deputy. Sardy (who loved everybody) still on guard.

And in the Mokelumne Wilderness I was patrolling with my dog Roxy, checking trail conditions. No one was lost, wide open spaces, I hadn’t seen a human in hours. Suddenly Roxy gave her human alert, stuck her nose in sagebrush. She’s crittering! I thought I could read my dog…. I went to check. Tucked into the bush was a sage-colored commando sweater still holding human scent.

Back when the movies showed prisoners escaping Bloodhounds by running down a creek, our dogs taught us they could find drowning victims underwater. This was in the 70s, Shenandoah National Park, and it started us in water search.

The Mexico City earthquake was a new twist. I’d never been asked to report whether my dog was indicating a live or dead person under rubble. On other searches, I’d noted my dog’s behavior in finding dead people; I’d also seen my dog’s reaction to finding a seriously wounded but alive suicide victim. In Mexico City, the dogs couldn’t access the person they were scenting. We would double-check with at least one other dog/handler team before reporting a live alert. Then would start the laborious, dangerous business of trying to reach the buried victim, with aftershocks still happening.

DG: So much verse is about being lost in a metaphorical sense, yet you’re one of the rare few that writes about people who are in the most tangible sense lost, missing. To what extent has the way you process these emotions changed over time and do you think writing poetry has been the positive impact in all this?

TG: I don’t know. Early on, I had almost a mental block on how to write about searches. I wasn’t finding good examples in books and journals to show me. Search dogs weren’t widely known; we were among the pioneers. So I just muddled through. As for emotions – I guess I tried to find an image that would show what was happening and also bring emotion to it. An early poem comes to mind, the search for an overdue photographer who was found buried by a wilderness avalanche. Hatch and the rest of our team were on the search. I didn’t have a trained dog yet – I thought Prissy (who came to us at 13 months as a “couch potato”) wasn’t suited for SAR. So I drove to the search as “support.” But I couldn’t stand being stuck at search base and not out there searching. (Prissy soon taught me she was a superb finder.) Anyway, the poem ends: Snow to the knee, the waist / is nothing. Our bindings clog. The sun / hangs five hours in our eyes, / subsides to afterglow. / We’ll come back at sunup / to dig a snowman out of snow.

DG: You have a deep fascination with Elihu Burritt and have even written a book of poems inspired by him (Walking With Elihu: Poems on Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith). I can think of no time more pressing than ours to learn from history and explore the ideas of this captivating figure who championed universal peace, international law, and a world court. Can you talk about how much research was involved in the writing process and what you learned?

TG: Growing up, I was interested in Elihu (a very distant relation) because he was a blacksmith (I was horse crazy; I later figured out he was no farrier, he made tools), and because he taught himself so many languages. I loved learning languages. When I finally got around to researching him, I found he was a copious writer (and very potent speaker) on peace, justice, human rights, brotherhood. He also kept journals (published as books) of his walks in Britain. I found a lot of his writings on the internet and also got books through interlibrary loan, and bought a few others, including two biographies (praise and critique). Elihu had many projects besides helping organize international peace conferences – trying to make life better for common folks, trying to avert our Civil War…. Some were successful, some not. But he never gave up hope. He seemed a bit naive to me, but somehow during the research and writing poems, I find he changed me from pessimist to someone who sees the bad but tries to find sources of light. If that makes any sense.

DG: You’ve mentioned Dana Gioia as an inspiration and have even used the word mentor to describe him. He once wrote the following about your work: “Graham has worked outside the official world of poetry, and she has never been given anything like the attention she deserves .... Although her independence has cost her external honors in the back-slapping, favor-trading world of Po-Biz, it has also given her the clarity and freedom to write as no one else can manage.” What do you admire most about Gioia’s work and who are your other inspirations?

TG: First, I think Dana is an exceptionally articulate speaker and writer on why poetry and other arts are necessities of life. He’s done great work promoting our art. His own poetry is very accessible, and I appreciate his natural-sounding use of forms. I learned back in grad school that lit crit isn’t my strong suit. But I’d say, in his poems I find emotion coming through in action &/or dissecting an action, in understatement and what-if. And I really relate to his relationship with the land. (I tried to rephrase that, but it didn’t work out.)

When I fell in love with poetry, in high school, it was Shakespeare, then Hopkins, Dylan Thomas, and cummings, inspired by their music. Now, I often turn to Mary Oliver, A. E. Stallings, Lisel Mueller, and a new find is Lowell Jaeger.

DG: One of your pieces can be found in the California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present, edited by Dana Gioia, who said that “Although it was a challenging and disturbing poem, it was so good that I knew we had to publish it.” The contribution in question is called “Pieces of Henry” and it’s about a serial killer. Though you’ve written about dark topics, the subject matter here seems a bit different from what you’ve normally done. What inspired the poem?

TG: I wish I knew. I wasn’t long out of grad school – Comp Lit – and I think I was trying a long poem in short pieces. It’s a combination of riffs on what I heard on the news and read in books (various crimes, unrequited lovers, Heinrich Schliemann, a small detail from Der Grüne Heinrich) and letting those bits go off on their own imaginations. Years later, some of our searches made me think of the Borrow Pit, especially Wilseyville/Leonard Lake & Charles Ng.

DG: From 2016 to 2018 you served as the inaugural poet laureate of El Dorado County. Can you talk about some of the initiatives and events you organized during that time?

TG: I knew right away what my first project would be. A SAR dog friend was also a member of American River Conservancy which had acquired Wakamatsu Farm, with a rich history including the first Japanese colony in North America. It’s a beautiful property with oak and buckeye woods, fields, a large pond with waterfowl. My friend was pushing me to do a poetry workshop there – poets wandering around, then sitting under a tree to write a poem. A lovely idea but I didn’t feel up to organizing and leading such a thing. As Poet Laureate, how could I not do it? I enlisted a poet friend, who’s especially good at making everyone feel welcome and involved, as my partner. We thought it would be a one-time shot. At the end of the first workshop, my SAR friend announced it would be quarterly, observing the seasons. We’re looking forward to our 34th workshop, Spring.

Another early venture was to get poetry on the program of Arts and Nature Fest in Georgetown (CA). The festival was going through a makeover with new direction, and I was invited to be on the planning committee, even though I don’t live on the Divide (but it’s one of my favorite places in the county). Besides a short reading by local poets on the amphitheater stage, for me the highlight of the day is a Poets Gathering – informal poem sharing in the Nature Area surrounded by ponds, replica Nisenan cedar-bark tipis, and of course the forest.

The Pony Express Re-ride comes through here every year, and informally I invite poets to join me in chasing the Pony – trying to get the place & timing right for seeing a mailbag hand-off and, while waiting, sharing horse and Old West, ranch & pioneer type poems.

I learned a lot about our county as Laureate, even though we’d lived here for over 30 years. I did lots of exploring and research. And I kept writing. At the end of my term I put together a manuscript of poems from those two years, and it found a home at Dave Boles’s Cold River Press – Windows of Time and Place: Poems of El Dorado County, 2019.

DG: El Dorado County has no shortage of beauty. What are your favorite places?

TG: I do a lot of walking/hiking with my dog here in the foothills, but where I really want to be is upcountry toward Carson Pass where I spent two summers as a volunteer Wilderness ranger, with my dog. El Dorado, Amador, and Alpine counties. In the last few years I’ve been looking for Basque sheepherder arborglyphs in aspen groves. Since the Caldor Fire, I stop at various spots in the burn scar, places we knew from searching, training, hiking, camping before it burned. I’m looking for signs of regeneration – pioneer plants, oak and conifer sprouts, animal tracks...

DG: Do you have fairly consistent writing habits or is it a matter of sitting down just when you feel like it?

TG: I get up early (about 4 a.m.) and sometimes write before coffee hits the brain. I love prompts and have a few sources on the internet. I get ideas while driving and walking; being in motion gets my head going. I think my consistent habit is, when I write the first line I have to keep writing till I think I’m done. I can’t stop in the middle and hope to get in the frame of mind where I started. Afterwards, I revise.

Sometimes I keep revising even after a poem’s published.

DG: What are you reading or working on these days?

TG: Right now I’m trying to work my way through a guide to animal tracks and other sign, like scat that my dog shows me on our walks. I want to know what critters are out there out of sight, going about their business. For poetry, I mostly use the internet now that I need reading glasses, which are awkward and make books less pleasant than they used to be. I like to see the variety of poems being written and published now. In my two writing-poetry workshops at local libraries, I have people bring a poem by someone else so we’re all exposed to a wide variety of styles, forms, approaches, eras.

Most of my poems now are inspired by daily trail walks, and by my only dog, a rescue half German Shepherd half Siberian Husky. When I adopted Otis at 13 months, I became his fourth home. His first home was in the wild, 2 miles into the forest with a feral mother. He’s a challenge, but he’s worth it.

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.