List

Range Rider 
The blinding sun washes the blue 
out of an endless sky swept with cirrus clouds; 
Brown hills and vast grasses bake between horizons 
from the northern glaciers to the southwestern deserts; 
In springtime rivers rush past, 
wild, huge, rearing, bucking, and blowing, 
challenging any who dare to cross; 
A cowboy of the new west loves his horses 
and the silence of open spaces; 
He guides huge herds of cattle 
thousands of miles between Alberta and Mexico; 
He hates blizzards, dust storms, and snakes 
and avoids the scattered, angry, starving indigenous indigents, 
the victims of the American holocaust 
which he neither started nor supports 
but nevertheless exploits; 
He visits a town for a little while 
for a bottle of whiskey, 
a genuine meal, a hot bath, a hot shave, 
some conversation, a real bed, a hired girl; 
But he is forever alert, wary, skittish, and suspicious 
of a ready woman’s deep, hunting, haunting heart.