Poetry: Before Cowboys Mourn
Before Cowboys Mourn
Fires lit the sky over the Texas Panhandle. Flames stung for miles over the grasslands. Hosweat singed the men who rushed to halt the steel grasshoppers that pumped oil on the smoldering hills. In the glow, cowboys shoveled dirt. Sweating in the heat they bailed water
saved the foreman's house, exhausted, beat, they lost the barn, the trailers. Driving through
the rough, the trucks that brought firemen were not enough to save three friends trapped
while rescuing their horses. The fiery wind sent smoke across I-4o toward four blinded drivers
who in a single breath met death. Over the scorched grasslands on Taylor's ranches, the cowboys saw the hide off the wretched calves' haunches. They rode all day on horseback
their rifles aimed to shoot the blistered, moaning cattle. Grasslands, eight hundred thousand
acres gone, ashes windblown, clearing the way for growth on land only nature can own --
more cattle, calves, fences, trucks, more steel grasshoppers around which cowboys mourn.
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| The skull of a cow rests on the grass in the North Texas Panhandle, 2007. |
Let Lovely Turn of Phrase Begin
JMHawley Gave Me a Kiss to Build a Dream On
Listen, will you? I think that . . . literature, poetry, music and love make the world go round . . . while mathematics explains things; I fill my life with them, then go walking in snowy woods.
Let us go then, you and I
like two etherized patients floating
through life, together feeling prufrockian.
DDB Jr. makes my world go 'round; during his absence, Pachelbel fills it up.
One summer I sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, then through the Gulf of Finland to reach Saint Petersburg; I pursued Joseph Brodsky in its alley ways. I dream of making that two summers.
I read “Biking to Electra;” found my way in a Jaguar car, and glanced at the flashing steel grasshoppers at sunset. I’ll follow K.O.P.’s footsteps after he followed N.Scott Momaday’s; find warmth and inspiration on a rainy mountain.
Throw chinese coins for the I Ching.
Save the whales, the spotted owl, the woman in toil.
Cast a fly for trout; my memories of fly fishing under the sunny blue Colorado sky remain; I yearn to build more . . . with more trophy Browns.
Listen for the swan’s calls on the Baltic Sea. Feel KKII's joy, his arms spread wide in Yazilikaya.
Good night, Jimmy Durante, where ever you are.
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