The Cowboy and The Moment
I was in a cattle drive yesterday
For about fifteen minutes
It happened this way;
I's going along a graveled road
The road crews were plowing up
Tire worn in ruts and spreading gravel new
The dust up behind my truck
Hung in the air like a tent over a pathway
And shade formed underneath -
When up ahead on a prominence
Sat a cowboy astride his horse
Some distance off so I slowed
To give him privilege of the road.
When I got to him and he motioned
So I stopped.
Down the draw over the hill's crest
Was a cattle drive caught in a loud knot
Like a hot congregation at the vestibule door
Wanting to get out of God's country,
But the reverend was chatty this morning,
And the whoops and hollers of parishioner's
The crack of rope whips and shuts the bible
Couldn't move the cluster any closer
To the open gate at the end of it.
The cattle wouldn't take the small hill
For they'd already come a long hot road
And the heat pressed their black coats
And drool drug from their mouths
To plop in the dust like a mercurial ball
Cows moaning, horsemen whistling
The dogs bit at their wooden heels with barks,
But nothing seemed to drive them along
They were anchored to the shade in the coulee
And the smell of running water.
The cowboy says to me, "If you'll watch for cars
And keep them off my herd,
I'll go down there and help them push this way."
"I can do it!" and I jumped from my vehicle.
I was a road guard on a rural route
Six miles from the Canadian border
In Northern Montana, and how many vihicles
Do you suppose would there be in the afternoon
When the dust hung like a coat in a pantry?
I listened to the wranglers call for the cattle
And the drive moved a slow procession,
As to be a can of worms with fur,
And horns and bemoaning bellows from the crew
Under the heat of a western afternoon
And the golden distant shade below
Trees already into fall's twist of colors.
Cattle dogs barked in a parting knot
And cowboys addled back and forth
Closing off the retreat path and in pairs
Buck saws the branch of cows forward
Away from where they thought they should go
To where they were expected a new grass range
And a nights safety from coyotes and owls.
They tramped and whooped, and a crack of a rope whip
On the broad hind end shook dust out of a black rug.
I'd only one car to hold up
A Verizon truck and the guy said
He didn't belong to the wireless group before I
Had a chance to ask, "Can you hear me now?"
But was helping communications at the border station,
So we watched aside the gravel a hundred black hooves stomp
Where the grader had taken the crown off the top
And spread the roadway new,
As saliva dripped in long lanyards to the dusty ground
And their jaws bawled and a whip's crack moved
Like a leather and wood machine it creaked and growled
Under the weight of stone and towers - when my dream broke
Another cowboy was yelling at me
To get off the road! I was spooking them
From a forward progression!
Where they could see me they turned back,
So I went off behind the Verizon truck.
Silver sharp like a knife into a sheaf
Or a bronze trumpet into its case
They slipped by in a Spanish brocade of bawls
And moo's and one tried to hump another
In the furnace heat of an October afternoon,
For in death there is no stronger urge - to rejuvanate
And then sure as the North is on our border
And the sun shone down and the sky was pure
They passed and at the trails end the cowboy who'd asked
Rode up to me on his spotted paint
Slipped the leather off his hand
And leaned over to take mine
"Thanks for the help." He shook and said
"You're welcome" - I replied.
He doesn't know his motion helped me
Of course he wouldn't
He's tough and easy in the saddle
And In control of his life.
Even though the cows were reluctant
He broke them through with pressure and compassion-
For he knew there was a better place ahead,
A new pasture grown green and ready to munch
With autum shade and water and coulees for protection.
He said to his wife that night, "I met a one legged man today."
And I said to mine
"I shook a cowboy's hand"
We stayed strangers
Though I wanted at once to call
Him friend.
~Richard Chapman 2008
Thank you to Maggie Nutter for the Photo ~
Moving cows to Police Coulee
