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THE E.S.L. RANCH
By Rod Miller
Stranded, I was, in some cow town,
Out of work and down on my luck;
No way to pay for my next meal
With my finances at less than a buck
When a man drove up in a pickup truck,
Said he was looking for a worker to hire.
Hauled me off to the middle of nowhere;
Dumped me out next to a campfire.
I'd just settled in for a good night's sleep
To rest up for the coming day's work
When hell broke loose with a vengeance
And awakened me with a jerk.
Get up you waddy! some guy hollered,
Can't ya hear coosie a-callin'?
Haul yerself out of them sougans!
Roll up that hen-skin and paulin!
Put on a load of Mexican strawberries
An' some sinkers to line yer flue,
Then grab a kak and come on back
And I'll tell ya what you're to do.
Rattle yer hocks down to the cavvy
An' with a reata snag a cayuse,
Then light out into the brasada
And chouse any critters that's loose.
I stammered at the man, dumbfounded.
He said, There ain't no time fer palaver!
If ya wanna be a ranahan
Get forked and get out on the gather!
Well, I resigned my position on the spot,
Mind reeling and spirit broken-
Starving's easier than working a job
Where English isn't spoken.
Copyright © 1998 Rod Miller. All rights
reserved.
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PARTICLE PHYSICS MADE ME DO IT,
SO BLAME IT ON THE ATOM
(THOSE THINGS THAT ARE SO TINY
I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WE HAD 'EM)
By Rod Miller
Strange stuff happens at a rodeo,
weird occurrences you can't understand.
Like when things suddenly fall all to pieces
while going according to plan:
A calf will run right out of a loop
when it was sure enough caught,
but about the time the slack is jerked
it turns out it was not.
Blink your eyes during the bull riding
while some cowboy's riding high
and suddenly he's in a pile in the dirt
and no one can figure out why.
Then there's the bulldogger who
slides right through the antlers on a steer,
or the bronc rider who goes from
getting his licks to landing on his rear.
It's mysterious how these thing happen
so sudden, and without any cause.
But it's not hard to explain for a physicist,
who understands nature's laws.
The structure of the atom, he'll say,
is responsible for the cowboy's fall-
for when you look inside these atoms
there's hardly anything there at all.
Say you took a nucleus, with its
protons and neutrons and such,
and made it the size of a marble;
big enough to hold, and touch.
And you dropped it in the arena
so out in the center it did lay,
all the electrons that go with it
would buzz around way, far away-
they'd be tinier than a pesky gnat,
the size, maybe, of a flea,
and flying about out past the parked cars
is where those electrons would be.
And there's nary a thing in between,
it's empty, there's just nothing there.
Everything is mostly a void, you see,
just a lot of vacant air.
That things seem to us to be solid
is illusion, says the physicist when he speaks.
So now I know, thanks to science,
why my bareback rigging leaks.
Copyright © 1998 Rod Miller. All rights reserved.
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BEYOND REPAIR
OR, THE RUINATION OF THE NATION
By Rod Miller
There are elegies written for the West
Lamenting the things we've lost
In a wave of development, growth and
Plunder where we never counted the cost.
The open range is gone, buffalo scarce,
The natives nearly all rubbed out,
Trail drives are over, and about these things
We whine and cry and pout.
So how come no one writes about
A loss that may be worse?
Where are the sonnets, the essays,
The songs, where's the rhyming verse
About the loss of a part of the West
That held us together, day to day?
I'm asking about that piece of the past-
The wire from a bale of hay.
It's become as rare as a grazing permit,
And the results are bound to be drastic;
There are so many things you just can't do
With that pretty colored plastic.
Artificial twine may be just fine
For tying a gate-'til it frays.
(Wire would last for years and years,
String's useless in a matter of days.)
You can't use it to hold together
Engine parts or patch up broken v-belts
Or keep a muffler from dragging
Because when it gets hot, it melts.
Where wire is stiff and straight and
Strong so you can use it to prod and poke,
Trying to do the same with a plastic twine,
If it wasn't so tragic, would be a joke.
And you can't mend a fence or repair
A boot or latch a truck door tight.
So I guess since we're stuck with this useless
String, we'll have to learn to fix things right.
Copyright © 1998 Rod Miller. All rights reserved.
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UNDER TEN
By Rod Miller
They wind them up
And stretch them out
And wait for the flag to fall-
In snaring horns
And trapping heels,
These hands give their all
.
To win a dime
In the team roping
Often enough to stay alive
You must get it done
In seven-
Sometimes, closer to five.
And there's a reason why
Team ropers
Must be that fast to win:
None of them have
Enough fingers left
To be able to count to ten.
ight © 1998 Rod Miller. All rights reserved.
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WISDOM
By Rod Miller
For my dad, Howard Miller, and his saddle pal Kay Cook
There's not one good lung among the four
Sucking air as through the brush they roar
Hot on the trail of a bunch-quitting old sister
Still in the hills after the gather that missed her.
There's more experience in those two old brains
Than a dozen young hands who take up the reins.
These horsemen, who once sprung light to the saddle,
Now haul themselves slowly into the straddle
And fidget and squirm in search of the seat
That carried them yesterday, fast, and fleet.
Neither ticker works right, one kidney's no good,
Their arms and their legs respond like deadwood.
After twelve calves, that cow ought to know better
But this year, she thinks, the cowboys won't get her.
Down dry washes, up crumbling banks,
Through dusty oak brush and muddy stock tanks,
Vaulting boulders and dodging holes,
Ducking under tree limbs and racing up knolls.
In hot pursuit with sirens wailing
Come four rheumy eyes with eyesight failing
Who ride together to watch out for each other-
But who watches out for these keepers of brother?
If experience is the best teacher, like they always say,
You'd never know it, to see it acting this way.
Copyright © 1998 Rod Miller. All rights reserved.
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