Past fences the first sheepmen cast across the land, processions of cringing pitch or cedar posts pulling into the vanishing point like fretboards carrying barbed melodies, windharp narratives, songs of @3place@1, I'm thinking of the long cowboy ballads Ray taught me the beginnings of and would have taught me the ends if he could have remembered them. But remembering was years ago when Ray swamped for ranches at a dollar a day and found, and played guitar in a Saturday night band, and now he is dead and I'm remembering near the end when he just needed a drink before he could tie his shoes. We'd stay up all night playing the beginnings of songs like @3Falling Leaf@1, about a girl who died of grief, and @3Zebra Dun@1, about a horse that pawed the light out of the moon. Sometimes Ray would break through and recall a few more verses before he'd drop a line or scramble a rhyme or just go blank, and his workfat hands would drop the chords and fall away in disbelief. Between songs he'd pull on the rum or unleash coughing fits that sounded like nails in a paper bag. Done, he'd straighten and say, @3My cough's not just right, I need another cigarette@1, and light the Parliament he bit at an upward angle like Roosevelt and play the start of another song. Then, played out and drunk enough to go home, he'd pick up his hat and case and make it, usually on the second try, through the front gate and gently list out into the early morning dark, beginning again some song without end, yodeling his vote under spangles. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SORROW by AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE DRIVING HOME THE COWS by KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD LITTLE GOLDENHAIR by F. BURGE SMITH TO THE MEN OF KENT by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH CHARACTERS: MARTHA JENNINGS by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD EMERGENCY by WILLIAM ROSE BENET WASTED FOUNTAINS by ANNE CHARLOTTE LYNCH BOTTA |