THE COWBOY TO HIS CITY LOVE

My love, how terrible that we should meet
At this dim hour, with only power to stare
Across the fence between the land and street.
The sun has fallen; wind breathes through our hair,
And in the distance, lights begin to flare
Within the households of your world. You say
Your arms are warmer than the night, You care
More than the cattle; Come with me, you say?
My horse stands waiting- Do I go or stay?

Oh, that I had been born to different soles,
We two could kiss, and to each other clutch
Forever, but we must act out our roles.
How God must laugh that we would love so much,
That you would choose my hand of coarser touch,
Though richer men for you have bent their knee!
Why me? My life is cursed to bear a crutch,
And like the whale held captive by the sea,
The bonds that snare us will not let us free.

But yet I love you! Bright Orion’s flare
Holds nothing to your eyes; my seas of grass
Are worthless to the acre of your hair,
The rain more savage than your tears. I pass
These thoughts away; the sun can’t have his lass,
The moon, though every day he makes a try
To hold her, his vast warmth cannot surpass
Her cold, and he is swallowed by her sky!
Observe! This is the way in which dreams die!

Be gone, and leave me to my grazing herd!
Go to your ashes, leave me to my dust!
It is a shame our ears had ever heard
The whispers of each other’s voice; we must
Obey the callings of our deeper lust.
Release me, woman! Run and hide from me,
But know that I will hear in every gust
Your name, though by tomorrow you shall be
Still loved, still graced, but yet still lost to me.

__________________

FOR TOMBSTONE
Orginally published in the July 1998 Kansas Cowboy.

There was a time before the blood, before the tears,
This morbid name was not familiar to our ears.
The silver fortunes waited in the hillside crust,
There was still land still yet to tame
And Fremont was an unknown name;
An ordinary street of ordinary dust.
But then, on these same streets, on this same sand,
Beneath this very sky, these mountains same,
On these same acres where these buildings stand,
Things changed, and vengeance then to Tombstone came.

All driven by their hate, four men walked on this street,
All armed, all heading for some destiny to meet,
And in an alley, eight men started with a nod
A fight, so known of by our breath,
The dragons spit their fire of death,
And thirty seconds found three men reclaimed by God.
The night brought tears and fears, a hate of laws,
A hate of Earps and feuds. The day was gone.
The bodies lowered in Earth’s hungry jaws
And still the gunfire echoed on and on

And on. And now, on this same dusty street we wait
With belts no longer burdened by a pistol’s weight,
To hear some phantom bullet from a phantom’s gun,
To hear the thunder of the storm,
To see the spirits rage take form;
How bad we want to rush and see the fight begun!
We wonder what makes this so different from
The rest, for even as we speak, the gun
Has claimed another’s life. For them will come
No legend, for the gun’s great age is done.

Yet who has never trod this street on which they walked
In their imagination? Who has never stalked
These streets to kill, to end, to set the bullet free
Into the body of the foe,
While letting all their anger go,
While devils in the dusty street swirl ‘round in glee.
This is our Camelot, worth more in dreams
Than life. It haunts our tales, it haunts our songs,
It lies behind a thousand drama themes,
This town, this Tombstone, in our hearts belongs.

But Camelot fell; cattle graze where blood did rinse,
And now it’s mighty walls are but a farmer’s fence.
While Tombstone stands, the Western sun begins to set.
All earthly light must fall to shade
And all the loudest echoes fade;
The desert screams: Do not forget, do not forget.
When we no longer hear the shots, when we
No longer rush to see the cause of wrath,
When we forget, they die, and cease to be
And then will Tombstone have its epitaph.

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