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.