Christiansen – English 092

 

Directions: Use pencil; one line under subjects; two lines under verbs; G.S. over a “grammatical subject” and one line under it plus 2 lines under its verb; circle and put SUB over subordinators.

 

1. From both sides of the valley little streams slipped out of the hill canyons and fell into the bed of the Salinas River.

 

 

2.

In the winter of wet years the streams ran full freshet, and

 

 

 

 

they swelled the river until sometimes

 

 

 

 

it raged and boiled, bank full, and then

 

 

 

 

it was a destroyer.

 

 

 

3.

The river tore the edges of the farm lands and washed whole acres down;

 

 

 

 

it toppled barns and houses into itself, to go floating and bobbing away.

 

 

 

4.

it trapped cows and pigs and sheep and drowned them in its muddy brown

 

 

 

 

    water and carried them to the sea

 

 

 

5.

Then when the late spring came, the river drew in from its edges

 

 

 

 

the sand banks appeared.

 

 

6.

And in the summer

The river didn’t run at all above ground.

 

 

 

7.

Some pools would be left in the deep swirl places under a high bank.

 

 

 

8.

The tules and grasses grew back, and

 

 

 

 

willows straightened up with the flood debris in their upper branches.

 

9.  The Salinas was only a part-time river.  10.  The summer sun drove it undergound.  11. It was not a fine river at all, but it was the only one we had and so we boasted about it – how dangerous it was in a wet winter and how dry it was in a dry summer.  12.  You can boast about anything if it’s all you have.  13.  Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.

Hidden in the shadows of Ketchup Canyon is a little spring

 

 

whose existence is of little importance to anyone,

 

now that a well has been established to supply the water needs of the area.

 

 

 

2.

The game trails

 

show that

 

 

 

 

which lead into the spring from four directions

 

 

 

 

 

at one time many animals came here for water.

 

 

 

3.

Now these trails are all but obscured by the grasses

 

 

 

 

which carpet the area.

 

 

 

4.

The barbed wire fence

was originally constructed of strong redwood posts and shining new wire.

 

 

 

surrounding the spring

 

 

 

5.

But now the fence is old.

 

 

 

6.

The wire

 

acts only as a guide line on which

 

 

 

 

rusted by age,

 

 

 

 

 

berry vines grow.

 

 

 

 

7.

The posts

are engulfed by vines.

 

 

 

 

which are still standing

 

 

 

8.

Only their tops are visible, pointing out at different angles above the brush.

 

 

 

9.

Several of the posts have been stripped of their wires and

 

 

 

 

 

broken at their bases and

 

 

 

 

 

now rest at oblique angles in the center of the spring.

 

 

 

10.

The origin of the spring is marked by a large granite rock.

 

 

 

 

11. Once water bubbled cool and clear from beneath the crown of stone, but

 

 

 

 

 

now only a black trail of mud and moldering leaves shows where

 

water once ran.

 

 

 

12.

The granite rock is no longer a crown:

 

 

 

 

it is a headstone

 

 

 

 

which lacks only an epitaph.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Change,” by Gene R. Agnew.  /copyright 1967 by SPECTRUM, Hartnell College creative arts magazine.

Used by permission of author.