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Photo by Jay Hagan,
7/12/08 Burbank, CA
A Thought for Today
Loving and being loved has taken me down every road I ever wanted to
travel, up every hill I felt the need to climb.
FROM the¨BOOKS
COWBOYS / CHEYENNE
ONE Brave
they straddle the animals,
hearts racing before the pistol sings
then leaping from the chute
man and animal as one
wedded groin to back.
One small moment in the air
and then the mud.
Hats retrieved
Levi’s dusted
back to the bullpen
to await the next event.
Sunday's choirboys,
in cowboy hats.
TWO
Huddled in the pits
below the grandstand
or lining at the telephone
to call home victories
they make a gentle picture.
Their billfolds bulging just enough
to make another entrance fee.
Next week Omaha or Dallas,
San Antonio is yet to come.
And now the Cheyenne autumn
like a golden thread
ties them till the weekend's done.
THREE
They wade through beer cans
piled ankle high in gutters -
the rodeo has moved
down from the fairground
to the town
and every hotel door's ajar.
Better than the Mardi Gras.
The nights are longer than Alaska now
until the main event begins
another afternoon.
But after all the Main Event is still to be
a cowboy.
For ten minutes or ten years, it's all the same.
You don't forget the Levi’s
hugging you all day
and Stetson hats checked in passing windows
cocked a certain way.
Some years later
when the bellies
flow over the belt loops
there're always mental photographs.
Here the hero in mid-air.
Now the Dallas hotel room.
Now again the gaping tourists
licking off the Levi’s with their eyes.
Photographs of feeling
mirrored in the mind.
- from "Lonesome Cities", 1968
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