You My Dusky Hue

The range in its majesty gives way to open thoughts of the wild things in taming, I have eaten hard pan and dust as my regular meal to be had. I to the constant trail beaten into the saddle just see what could not be tamed. There is beauty found within the beasts of the fields, within the tree’s to the treeline. They all feeble things next to you my dusky hue. I but a small man in wealth not much to the offering bowl, to live from the saddle bags by choice not many would do. I live half-feral, fighting the hard winds when necessary, blanketed in snow a brutal life. I follow in blindness of white, head down in the snowstorm– yes driven to see you. I would but to give my all in any form to last breath in glimpsing you my dusky hue. I would then give open hand an outstretching for the touching of you; I worn hard and worked but still yours. Goat trails and sage with the buck and antelopes, I follow from shade and shadow. I’ve seen all the crooked paths and mountain spires, ancient writing from lost tribes guiding me the man the myth to you. I’ve sung from the saddle to the moon with the wolf and his brother the coyote. They answered in crescent smile, howling as my accompaniment…she just before the next rise was the answer. The ever wanderer to you in my own solitude I driven as the whirlwind, eyes squint, cheeks leathered, living on the surface of the sun I travel. Always to the horizon line is my sight, waiting, watching, praying today’s the day of salvation. I ride and say this day….this days the one. I ask nothing for myself, I the sole provider of me the simple one, but to seek out you my dusky hue is my life I born to. I wish a want of you from afar waiting, watching. Yes, it is more than I could bear to think always you’ve been real to me. A man can only be a man when he’s succumbed to the knowledge that he is nothing without his dusky hue. She in my sight in the good drunk, in lonesomeness at times the only way to sleep. She is the maker of the man– the maker of me in hard times, yes to be molded by the hand of the master by her will makes what could not be molded to the driven man…the hard man. Perfection comes in many shades in the ways of the weary soul, I see and yet give way to the mirage in deep thirst and delirium. I know your face as the one and only, even if you know not I exist. It’s to the will of it to dream the dream of the most beautiful, even if she’s not yours and can never be. A man can not be one, without a sacred thing to love even in a quest. I feel the pains in the contortions of love. I see the exorcism of the heart to the soul open handed. Love…love…love…Oh! how I hate to love so much, an image I’ve never seen in real form which is you my dusky hue. I say one day before the howling moon rises, I shall pull the hard drink before I die thinking you will be before me by mornings light and kissing sun. You my dusky hue, my dream that’s kept me driven to the hard life. I worn by the saddle eating sand by the pound, sand by the day. It’s worth it to me to be what I must, in this world revolving around me. I shall live till I die for just one silhouette of you, in the open plains watching waiting for me at least in my dreams of perfection… I live to die, always to you my dusky hue. By Renee Bousquet