Them **** beasts
Hunt our cattle
Picking out the weak.
Go get your rifle, son.
Go fetch your boots.
Those *******
Look best skinned
And ******
Across the bed
Of this old truck.

I nod along with them.
I plod along with them to get the guns;
Isn't this necessary,
After all?

But inside my soul
I feel a dark night spreading
No, not sinister
But sweet.
The stars above like scattered drifts
Of snow spilled in the wind and crunching under
Loping feet.


And I am standing on a narrow ridge
And listening.
Hidden like some ephemeral thing,
Like sweetgrass burning in the wind;
Listening.

And I can feel them rising.
I can hear them crying,
A ghostly sobbing.
Falling on my knees
I call them.

To the draw they run!
Run!
Like so many mothers clutch their young
And all the warriors toss their guns
And still the cavalry descends,
Run!

Across the creek and trailing blood, she runs.
Singing her howling song, she runs.
Howling her death song, she runs.  

And in one last act of desperation falls.

I see them drag her carcass up the draw.

And in the truck, they’re laughing,
Humming, slapping knees, and spitting,
Like some celebratory release.  

In my head, a single phrase:
Them **** beasts.

I was out with my Guy
driving around, putting out feed
when he took me to see
this old cot that was left
under a tree

Once upon a day
there was probably a cowboy
that liked to stay
under the sheltering shade
of this llano tree

He liked to set up camp
and read then sleep
dream deeply and sweetly
until first light crept up early
and finally shined brightly

He'd leave the cot
in his favorite spot
until
again
ultimately left
to slowly rot

And capture his presence
and bit of his essence
left under the llano tree

many of his posts tilted
like trees tired of the wind; wires sagged,  
red rusted, but still jabbed the errant cow  
when duty called    

three quarters a century
he rode the same trail; of late,
he had gone afoot, the saddle too heavy
for him to heft  

walking, he reconnoitered  
the tracks with more care--hooves of his myriad steers,  
a few equine signs of the farrier’s labor    
still  there, fast fading    

his boot prints were  
more numerous now, and sometimes
tamped down by the few beasts left
in his herd    

across the line lay his dead
neighbor’s pastures, peppered with mesquite,
pocked by fire ant holes;  no livestock grazed, but the giant turbines whined, white whipsaws slashing not timber, but blue sky    

driven by the relentless winds,
they called to him, in chanted chorus, issuing a premonition:  
one day soon, your fence will fall, and the path you trod
will bear no new tracks for other souls to read

How does the rancher learn to dance
The annual rhythms of the land?

When do we bring the cows, bawling,
From open summer to sheltered winter pastures?
When is it time to bring the stubborn bulls
To the empty, urgent cows,
Or to remove them from contented cows,
Grown placid in the heaviness of calves?

How do we know the time
To round up the sweltering herds,
Bringing the bellering calves to brand?
Or when do we cull the frightened heifers,
Lucky in their selection, but uncertain?
When should we pare the weanlings,
And when call we the buyers?

And, when is the time for hiking forty miles
Of rusting fence,
Replacing posts,
Mending broken wire
Before the changing of pastures?

And when is the time to come to ease,
To sense the satisfaction
In seeing grazing cattle,
Tails swishing away the black flies of June,
Moving through gray-green prairie grass
On their way to cool creek water?