Helping Earl meant bring your best
horse to stay ahead of trouble,
especially in Sulphur, a mount
that could cross the brushy draws
and stand up in scree, I’d imagine
the night before my young dreams—
a bay gelding who could read
the minds of renegades at 200 yards,
or the boot-tough brown mare
from Rudnick’s broncs before him.
They spent their lives making me
more helpful than I was, in or out
of the corrals. It was always Western
and I’d wake to saddle in the dark,
to be on time for wild adventure, enough
for all spread across the watershed—
simultaneous, far-flung accounts
polished in the shade for future poetry.
drycrikjournal 