COWBOY SOUL

Cowboy poetry? Yessir, cowboy poetry. One of my favourite websites – folkstreams.net – a must-check-it-out for american folk mystics, yeilded to me in my state of 6 am ale-induced haze an old documentary on some real cowboy culture. There’s definitely something mystic about it, these solemn, simple people. but not hick-simple, more simple-pure. Their way with the wide-open spaces around them, their way with women, their way with words, becomes real appealing through this. And the wit, its charming. Simply put, it’s too, too nice.

If your eyes and ears are keen ones, smack that link up and have a search for the ‘cowboy poems’ film. Its there. For the less bothered reader, read on for a poem by one savvy, beardy cowboy by the name Wallace McRae. It’s worth a Yeehaw.

“What does reincarnation mean?”
A cowpoke asked his friend.
His pal replies, “It happens when
Yer life has reached its end.
They comb yer hair and warsh yer neck
And clean yer fingernails
And lay you in a padded box
Away from life’s travails.

“The box and you goes in a hole,
That’s been dug in the ground,
And reincarnation starts in when
You’re planted ‘neath a mound.
Them clods melt down, just like yer box,
And you who is inside.
And then you’re just beginnin’ on
Yer transformation ride.

In a while the grass’ll grow
Upon your rendered mound.
Till someday on your moldered grave
A lonely flower is found.
And say a horse should wander by
And graze upon this flower
That once wuz you, but now’s become
Yer vegetative bower.

“The posey that the horse done ate
Up with his other feed
Makes bone and fat and muscle
Essential to the steed.
But some is left that he can’t use
And so it passes through,
And finally lays upon the ground
This thing that once was you.

Then say by chance I wanders by
And sees this on the ground
And I wonders, and I ponders, at
This object that I found.
Why, I thinks of reincarnation
Of life, and death, and such,
And I come away concluding: Slim,
You ain’t changed all that much.”

man…he kills his buddy with that last line.

Big love,

Easy C