1.
Grandfather was the only
rider never thrown
by a boxy Umatilla Hills pinto
called Muffled Screams.
Between rodeos
he laid metal tracks
coast to prairie—shod hooves,
shovels, picks, gandy poles.
In the generation of his birth,
railroad seamed
American land
at a rate per capita
yet to be exceeded
in recorded history.
Starting to rise
back up before
his back hit dust: an artifact
of ancestry.
2.
Before her body took a bad fall,
cousin said Indians
were natural riders.
She was a consummate
teller of thorny tales.
Later she said the cure
to her disease would turn
her hide to iron-horse dusk.
I have a hard time
recollecting the exact shade
of her eyes,
but her red curls
stay with me.
She could stick
on any horse, but she
didn’t want to live
on those machines
so she didn’t.
Like green-broke
horses sunfish,
butterfly, crow hop—
we wear out our backs
trying to cast
the burden.
3.
A half-remembered
elder taught me to pull
a rope against a winch
up to five pounds’ pressure.
A good rider
never pulls harder.
As a kid I had
a lazy habit
looping the reins
around my fingers like macramé
until a hard buck
delivered me to gravity—
leather twisted into a tourniquet
across my palms.
Withers and saddle
horn punching twisted horizons
of sky and arena grime.
Never learning
but the hard way, riding or
ridden I had to unknot myself.