Continuation, alteration of the poem I started Monday:

A new ending, though it’s still not right.  Interesting to find something so simple so challenging.  Endings.  I gotta work on mine.

 

Back to the place

Where we were birthed

Or are we born again

Each day

 

Nope.  Not there yet.

Oh, forget it.  Onto a new start:

 

I wept tears like raindrops

Pregnant with promise

(now is this too cliché?)

Pouring upon the land

Dousing sparks of unrest

In changing times

A land hot and swollen as my crying eyes

Sadness for the loss of life upon the now red hills

My sisters standing before me

Stripped and whipped

Waves of grace flow and settle like smoke from approaching fires

Covering up

Consumed

 

Tears like raindrops

Falling through the cracks

Of a parched land

Raped and left to die

Our land of plenty

 

And now my mother weeps

Left lying in a heap before us

Blood we are unable to wash free from our hands

As needles from the dying trees fall

Lining the yellow brick road to where I wonder

 

I am suffocated, suppressed

By my own sadness

 I cry

Tears

Dancing

A song upon the metal roof

 

Friend and fellow writer, Tricia’s M. Cook, has just published a new post on her blog over at Mountain Gazette entitled, “Hunting Bears,” an essay for those who know and love these furry beasts. Me, I can be as wild as any wild beast and willing to hold my own and fight for it if need be.  You stay on your side of the fence, I’ll stay on mine.  I choose to live in bear country, and I stake a little claim there.  And yes, I will defend it, though I’m happy to let the bear do as she pleases on her side of the fence.  I believe Ursa, like my friend Coyote, can be trained.  See this line?  Don’t cross it.  And don’t, definitely don’t mess with my watermelons, as the old story goes.  Tricia has a slightly different way of seeing things.  Please read for yourselves.

Which reminds me.  The free range cows have come for the season.  How out of place can an animal be, seeing domestic cattle up above tree line.

The semi’s arrived, and how many hundred pair are left to learn the perils of the High Country.  Never a popular moment.  Nor will it be after they are gathered for the season, and we are left to find the strays.  Or carcasses.

Our Forest Service calls it multiple use.  A lovely term. I call it putting up with cow shit and closed gates for the profit of the one rich man who owns them.  Go figure.

But this much I’ve learned: you might wanna still be a cowboy, but I’d rather keep working at being a horse(wo)man.  Hooting, hollering and riding the road in a dusty wake behind a bunch of loud and stinky cows destined for slaughter isn’t really my thing.  Why do we still use that term, “cowboy,” for those of us that work horses, not cows?  Cowboy.  Consider it.  Part cow?  Ever look deep into a cow’s eyes?  I use the term “deep” loosely here, if you know what I mean. So, as you can figure, I’d rather stick with being a horseperson and leave the “cow” part for the dinner table.

 

And I end today’s post (are you still here with me?) with these simple words:

 

I care not to live someone else’s dream

And try to wake early enough to remember my own.