The Cowboy's Legacy

Watchin' the cattle beddin' down
Sittin' by the campfire
All alone, so far from town
Feeling the pull of his hearts desire

Riding the open range
Breeze in his face
Watching the country change
The loss of the wide open space

The thoughts of times gone by
Pass vividly through his mind
Wilder, rowdy days
Have all faded away

Giving way to the wire
Holding him in and keeping him out
And it hits him hard, without a doubt
That he's lost his hearts desire

The freedom of the cowboy has faded
The city has made his image jaded
But the legacy lives on
As into the sunset, the cowboy...
Rides on

Darrin L. Broyhill

Daylight

Diamond dust...
Shooting stars fading away -
leave tails of spun silver, grasses of gray...
Soft meadows of stars precede the dawn,
The souls of wild mustangs gathering strong.

Tails and necks arched,
They turn to the wind...
Racing the sun's rays, beginning again -
The souls of wild mustangs
Gallop the sky,
Into cover of darkness - with cowboys behind,
Mounted on ponies that hurtle the stars,
Angle the moon....cut through the dark...
Kick up spirals of soft cumulus clouds,
Manes flowing as comets, heads gently bowed.

Lassos of sun's rays tossed across heaven,
Fall gently to earth without mustangs to wear them,
They gallop the world in perpetual flight -
Wild mustangs from darkness,
Lead cowboys to light.
Suzanne Alexander

THOUGHTS
©  All Rights Reserved * David Kelley

Some matters a cowboy ponders, are
not often shared with another,
Though that saddle pal, or bunkmate, might
just be closer than a brother.
To hear a sweetheart say I love you, a
wrangler never would admit,
Yet most cowboys dream everyday dreams,
I would most humbly submit.

He'll spend a good deal of time alone, it seems,
when thoughts often run wild,
'Bout good horses, mother, and innocent
times when he was a child.
He'll remember the struggles with others or
battles had all alone.
The secret times he'll cry silently, while hurting
clean to the bone.

He might see the sky as a canvas, daily painted
by the hand of God,
Or a vast journal with messages and hints about
the life he'll trod.
It's the massive ceiling for that open air arbor
he call's his Church,
Where the Lord rides 'with' him, as opposed
to judging from a lofty perch.

Looking toward a bluff, puts him in mind of
that fortress from the past,
And those who gave the ultimate, in order that
our freedoms might last.
He sees the land as both a loving parent and
an innocent child,
Clearly able to feed the earth, ever ready to
return to the wild.

Many times his only confidant is the good horse
he sits astride.
Folks may come and go, but that's always one
pard he'll never set aside.
The mare, the gelding, the stud, from their
starting to the eventual end,
In spirit they are one, an equal relationship,
amigo, friend.

He'll ride to the east side of a ridge, for the
proclamation of the morn,
While carefully being ever thankful for those
things which seem inborn.
The newly rising sun brings thoughts of
moving afar from errant ways,
But evening reminds him, an end must come
to even the best of days.

His inner thoughts may be hard to behold
amongst the bold bravado,
They're the secret ingredients of one
possessing his own El Dorado.