Drover
“Now, you take cattle drives”,
five words overheard at a cocktail party
draw you like a magnet to a clutch
of people, academics mostly, maybe
a few hotshot dotcom vacqueros bolting
Colonel E.H. Taylor Bottled-In-Bond
bourbon, desperate for purchase
as puppies on teats. Stetson
big as the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc,
pearlescent buttons, matched mother of pearl
handled six shooters, Sam Elliot, the hope
as you shoe horn in, sharp elbows
shucking an oyster, expecting a pearl.
Beeves are to blue bonnets, longhorns to lies,
for all I know, but that doesn’t stop me
from painting wordy Remington’s
evoking time on the Chisolm and nights
in the saloons and whorehouses of Abilene.
I return the nod and tip my glass in tacit
complicity, pale natives of northern latitudes,
accustomed to conspicuous plentitude,
keeper, each of the other’s secrets.
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