The Cowboy Poet

	9/13/2023                        Clovis, Ca             JLW            [439T]

The Cowboy Poet
	creates a picture
	that somehow lives
	a life of its own
	as it dreams 
	in its own cowboy dreams

some years ago now
	and out of the blue 
	I was introduced 
	by really good friend
	“John is an actual real live Cowboy”
	her son was very impressed
	I had to quietly ponder that introduction
	for a good while

from before I can even remember
	I learned the cowboy ways
	well at least some of the cowboy ways
	we always had horses and cows
	and we all knew that Dad
	was a “Bull Shipper” par excellence
	plus I do believe he was a real Horse Whisperer
	[Our brood mare, Beauty, came off the Nevada Range.
	They had tried to “Whip Break” her. She went through eleven board fences 
        and bit a mans hand.  She somehow got tangled in barbed wire before 
       Dad got her.  When I met her she was very gentle and could really still run like the wind; 
        leaving us all in her dust.] 

I have always been comfortable in the saddle
	(from the age of five)
	around horses and cows
	I always think and act like a cowboy
	around people too
	come to that

not all that long ago
	I was introduced as a “Poet”
	I was not comfortable with that one either
	I have been writing my “Brand of Poetry”
	for over fifty years
	my written words (and my reading)
	have touched hearts from day one
	(which was then
	and still today
	a mystery to me)
	I had to ponder “being a Poet” for a while too

today I am
	“A Big Hat - - No Saddle” guy
	in a “Big Hat” kind of town

still that young cowboy at heart
	all the same

and just maybe
	in my cowboy dreams I am
	“The Poet” she knew as “Cowboy”
	at the “Y’all Come Back Saloon”





[ "Y'all Come Back Saloon" by Sharon Vaughn
Released in 1977; Oak Ridge Boys  - -major hit song;
lyrics:

She played tambourine with a silver jingle
And she must have known the words to at least a million tunes
But the one most requested by the man she knew as cowboy
Was the late-night benediction at the y'all come back saloon
]