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The Lucky Ones

Lucky ones

Your pay is to break, to hurt, be bent and stink,
 the bank is your body, selling labor the means.

A wage is a a wave of dread 
	for the very dinner on your plate.
Again with the pinto beans. 

You vacation is those times you wait 
for the sun to rise as you make the rounds late 
riding the night shift, freezing.

Your pension, getting to work all day in the heat
	off no sleep, blistering in your seat
every day's a holiday.

Your bonus is getting bucked of your saddles surface
and to land on your behind in a pile of cactus.
To ride back through the outfit, too afraid to mention
those spines in your briches,
	Cuz they'll tease you relentless.
 
So instead grinding your teeth worse
 than the dentist would (if you ever went),
And looking for the pliers, trust that someone equally useless
left them out on the fence. 

Your tenure is deserved when you're about ten years deep 
and have been nearly trampled by either the horse 
you straddle, or stampede of cattle
and that you've attained the sheer honor 
to fear your own defeat.
When you've learned  of your mortality, the hard way
and are still riding for a brand that still stands for something.

You are the lucky ones
and the rest of us shallow,
YOU, born into what's been before, now, and tomorrow so valued
But not in medallions or even thousands of cattle
But lucky just to fit the picture perfect as you search through the rubble
	Like you chanced to stumble on the thing we all wanted so badly 
		But in the moment, couldn't tell. 

You're lucky to huddle freezing to your own spiddle  
	Bucked and thrust right into the pictures of ol' Charlie Russle
Painted to land on your feet with your boot heels in the saddle. 
	You are the lucky ones, the ones, the few who still work cattle. 

In this modern daze, where most would think beef and cellophane
are somehow related, and want only to pay a dollar per steak. 
As if entitled or somehow deserved, leaves most of the rest of us 
sheer out luck
     - on the brink of being famished.
Because only the rare few actually get to ride in search of an angus.

You are the lucky ones, Just to work them
the richest elite it seems to me, that get to hurt like
our grandparents did before us
And to chase them with a purpose
Rather than purposefully running them off,
and not wanting to know or watch from where dinner is served
Like we're afraid 
that even having them near
will cost an arm and a leg.

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