ODE TO MRS. HORSE
the cow that died to give its hide
to make you look so shiny...
- Ed Brown
And you did, the sheen of your synthetic
leather-looking top gathered tastefully
below a deep crevasse of tanned flesh,
Ed’s blue ballpoint upon a napkin cloth
in the half-lit darkness of the White Horse
bar, on a roll after dinner and a reading –
the complete poem framed on the wall
reminds you of that evening twenty-five
years ago: cowboys come to entertain
when were young-enough to be irreverent,
but with scars-enough to know better.
A crossfire of fresh rhymes ricocheted
around the room, as around the West
in those days, but Ed had the pen
and final say as to what went down.
for Jeanie White
Parallel retrospectives in the rain, Elko’s 25th and where Robbin and I were twenty-five years ago…a pensive day.