I wish I had a horse named Peppermint
back in the days of dust, leather,
and wooden signs
that smack back and forth in the wind-trails
left by me and my Peppermint
as we dash to and from town
on another adventure
fraught with coyotes
and canned beans.
A man who names his horse Peppermint
is not afraid of drink,
of gambling and a game of Liar's Dice.
He can wear the same clothes for months
and is not afraid of a gun
or the opportunity to use it.
Out there, under the stars,
playing a harmonica,
it is more comforting to have a lovely lady at your side
than a fearsome Thunderbolt or Apache.
When we ride into town
and I saddle up to the bar
I always order two shots,
one for her and one for me.
If I could trade places with my cowboy ancestor
I would visit a house of ill repute
and, when finished, sing in the outhouse
while a crack of light shines through a half-moon
cut out of the door
I would spit in a spitoon
and relish in the clang of my spurs
as they bite into the ground
and Peppermint's hide
as we ride off.
This is so good, April!
ReplyDeleteI like the canned beans bit because I always imagine a cowboy sitting at his campfire, chowing down on can of beans. (Though it’s hard for me to think about this without thinking of Dennis the Menace.) Plus the combination of something scary and dangerous like coyotes with canned beans works because they are such opposites.
In the second stanza when you wrote “is not afraid of drink” it sounds a bit awkward. Maybe you could change it to “is not afraid to drink” or “is not afraid of drinking.”
Though I love the wording “lovely lady” it does not sound like something a dangerous, adventure-loving cowboy would use. You could try “little lady” because it seems more like the language one would use.
A little bit of nerdy history from me: men’s outhouses did not have the crescent moon on them, but a star. The reason they are known these days for having the moon on them is because the men let theirs get in such bad shape that it was mostly the women’s outhouses that survived. Maybe you’ll still want to keep it a moon because that’s how people identify them these days, but to make it more true to its time it would be star.