The B-Westerns’ barroom brawls
have spawned a herd of wannabes
with renewed gossip among the locals—
and every year someone dies
with too many horses powered
by alcohol. And all the young wranglers
stay sensible, until they forget
the promises they made to themselves,
their wives and families.
A century and a half ago,
a horse knew his slow way home,
and if his rider fell off
it usually didn’t kill him.
Posted in Poems 2022
Tagged "From Town" Badger Clark, barroom brawl, cowboy culture, Drunk driving, DUI, testosterone
Of all the necessary evils strung
across the West, mile after mile
glistening either side of every highway,
every rail, keeping cattle in and people
out: lines of wire and sentry posts
standing between a disastrous mix
of urgencies, a clash of cultures:
the timeless calm of open space
invaded and escaped at seventy.
The better ground fenced between
Frost’s good neighbors, cross-hatched
into managed pastures cowmen dream
will optimize the grass, the grazing—
and of course the breeding: a tangled
trail of testosterone enraged to war,
a crash of skulls, two tons of bellowing
bulls colliding in a storm unwinding
borders for as far as they can.
Most cowboys despise fixing fence—
ride around the long step down
to keep the evil stuff up.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015
Tagged Barbed Wire, bulls, cowboys, cowmen, fences, fixing fence, necessary evils, Paregien Ranch, photographs, poetry, testosterone, weekly-photo-challenge
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