Vaquero

Wiry wasn’t the word for him

Whip-thin maybe, a skein of hide stretched

Over long, flat muscles

And the cage of bone that barred

His heart: mustang-wild.

His eyes were water-colored and their irises

Held the sky. 

He sat the shifting spine of the horse

His breath coming sure and even, the animal

Calming to match him: the bellows of its lungs

And the furnace behind its ribs and the organ-tones

Of its heart and the great red beating of muscle and bone

All reined in, yielding

To his narrow brown fingers.  Together

They held their ground against the bare sky

And that is how I picture them:

Cattle sweeping down the valley at their heels

The smell of desert wind and dung and leather

All the miles of red earth they’d traveled that day

Caked in dust, sweat

Salting their hides, the man

And the animal

The animal in the man.

There is no name for what they were.

The last of a breed, the end of the line

All the clichés we throw up to defend ourselves

Against the void, defying extinction.

They turned their faces west, horse and man

Pressing the herd onward toward a sunset

Which failed to raise any romantic

Visions of a vanishing age.

©KB 5/5/12