Tag Archives: Pride

HAWAII FIVE OH

Audio Recordings / tagged , / / by

HAWAII FIVE OH

It was so damn beautiful
It could have been an
ad for anything

A young man and a beautiful
young woman, hair streaming
over soft well-tanned neck
gallop along a deserted
white-sand Oahu beach

They wouldn’t include
in the thirty second ad
how very hard the cowboy
from Canada is trying to
impress the Island maid

How many thousands of acres
How many broncs he has rode

How she had given him
the eighteen hand Hunter to ride
and how they had left the silly
English saddles behind

How good he feels about himself
as the sand kicks up from hooves
how pride goeth before a….
rogue wave crashing at their feet

And the big horse spooking
and the cowboy’s instincts doing
everything right, if he had been
neck-reining a quarter horse

and everything wrong on this one

Who goes left while he goes right
right out from under

With nothing but gravity
between him and
where his butt meets
the wet hard sand

The visible bruise
lasts a week or two

The therapy is taking
a little longer

DANCES WITH HORSES

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry / tagged , , , / / by

DANCES WITH HORSES

And what is the poem of Rusty
who slips at full gallop and picks up all
four feet and sets them down sure on the next
dry spot

Of Lady still so afraid of wire she can buck
fourteen hours tired
if a four inch chunk should strike a hoof

And the dance of the wild mare in the corral
who kicks and one foot goes by on each side of
your head

And of the colt separated from mother’s flank
by a gunny sack in the face and a quick gate,
who turns a tight arc and comes back at you, and
you see it in the eyes and duck and he sails over
taking out the top rail

And you hear that your father gave you the first
compliment you’ve
ever heard of by turning to the man beside him
and saying

“The damned fool will get himself killed someday”