Got a Question? Ask A COWBOY POET!
may 2026
Some poems stick with us. Poems committed to memory live on long after we learn the lines, bound up with memory, family, school, and place. Even if the exact lines you once knew start to fade, the feeling of the poem persists. This month, the cowboy poets answer a question posed by a nurturer of storytelling and rhyme,
“What was the first poem you committed to memory, cowboy or otherwise, and why has it stayed with you?”
~ Mother Goose
BIll lowman:
It was at my one room country grade school, three horseback miles up through my parents’ ranch. I was forced to learn it for our annual Christmas play, titled BILL.
I had it down good, but today I can only recall a few starting lines.
Bill
My Mother calls me William,
My Father calls me Will,
My sister calls me Willie,
But the fellers call me Bill.
I love to chomp green apples,
And go swim in the lake,
I hate to take that castor oil,
They give for a belly ache.
Little did I know what the future would hold due to poetry.
Dick gibford:
I was 15 and looking through my father’s library one day and came across a copy of Rhymes of the Ranges by Bruce Kiskaddon. I opened the book sorta in the middle or a bit passed to “The Cowboy’s Dream.” I was spellbound to that poem and started memorizing it right then. In a week or so I had it to memory, and would practice telling it to anyone willing to listen. I think that poem is more relevant now that I am getting old than it was then! I am not a devout Bible readin’ Christian but I have a strong spiritual nature, and like Bruce says in the poem during his encounter with the angel lady,
And all this water, it’s sad to think
There ain’t no hosses or cows to drink
With all this grass a goin’ to seed
And there ain’t no critters to eat the feed
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I am sorry miss but I will tell you true,
This ain’t no place for a buckaroo!
Watch Waddie Mitchell recite “The Cowboy’s Dream” at the 36th Gathering!
doris daley:
Robert W. Service was part of the language arts curriculum in Alberta back in the 1960s when I was in 7th grade. Our homework one weekend was to memorize two whole verses of "The Cremation of Sam McGee." I memorized the whole thing (15 verses) for the sheer joy of the story, the rhymes and the rhythm. That poem was my gateway drug into the world of rhymed and metered poetry. Thank you, Mrs. DeMaere, for introducing me to Robert Service. But the story doesn't end there.
We were a family of three kids. Not a large family, but when all three kids went with Dad to do chores, two kids were in the middle (squished) and one was by the door (prime spot). With "Cremation" locked and loaded in my brain, I only had to say "There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold" and my siblings were crying Uncle, saying, "Stop! Stop!" and the passenger door was mine. Which just goes to show that there are many, many benefits to memorizing poetry.
darrell holden:
My grandparent’s ranch is in remote western Utah. I was about eight years old, and my grandfather had passed away two years before, and we were at the ranch to see Grandma Ekker. The adults were in the kitchen visiting, and I was in the living room looking at the old pictures and a couple paintings and the potbelly stove. On the wall was a board with a stanza of a poem glued to it. It didn’t have an author, just these words…
Sweet clean air, from east to west,
With room to go and come.
I loved my fellow man the best,
When he was scattered some.
I asked Grandma if she wrote it. She laughed and said no, it was a favorite of my Grandpa Ekker. She had hung it on the wall for him. Well, right then and there, I decided if my Grandpa liked it, so did I!!! It’s the first rhyme I ever memorized. I found out much later it was a line from a Badger Clark poem called “The Old Cow Man.”
But not exactly—the Clark poem stanza starts,
With skyline bounds, from east to west
I don’t know why the version I learned was changed. I just know it struck a deep chord in me. It’s still a sacred little verse, and it has truly shaped my life. It’s definitely my motto, as I greatly appreciate small numbers of people and a lot of space between ‘em.
It has stayed with me some fifty years later because it’s a cherished reminder of my grandparents, who I love completely. They gave me so much in this legacy I carry forward. My love of cattle, cow horses, family, the desert, solitude, and even poetry. I’d like that verse carved into whatever little rock marks where my bones will lay someday. It’s become part of me. That’s what poetry does to us.
Darrell Holden
May 19th 2026
