A Frenchmens Hell Nothing More

A Frenchmen’s Hell Nothing More David J Walker No father Please I pled It was only a dream Nothing more About mesquit trees Turning themselves into mustang ponies Nothing more Running wild and free on a drunkards horizon A prairie’s floor The fences strengthened The three gates tightened hanging post to post to post Nothing more Now About the horse’s corral a few paces from the barn You could see It was only me Painting curses in Spanish because I knew The obscene verses Could be far worse Because the Mustangs could read them And laugh at my bad Spanish grammar Still They got the picture Nothing more to the story except It’s why I stayed awake past midnight And snapped the bullwhip ever so often Cracking a warning into a southwest wind Blowing warm its warning in naked numbness Nothing more Except, father The mustangs might win the fight and send The souls of our stallions into a Frenchmen’s Hell falsely claiming the birthright of the foal A bleak sight In starlight The dark night before The next daylight slowly begins Folding into a new beginning Hiding the various meanings of freedom demanding variant forms to consider as if daybreak was the dawn of another committee meeting But father In the dream, I become the thief in the night Steeling a Mustang away from its herd Calling it my own He hates me and I know he always will He loves the way I ride like no other as if in stride With the wind and then steal the will of the condemned Sending us both to a Frenchmen’s hell Just as well Father Just as well