Best Cowboy Poems

When hard times come they sit a spell,
Like kin folk come to stay
A-packin' troubles, pets an' kids
That always get ‘n your way.
It's drought an' flood, an' flood an' drought,
There ain't much in-between.
You work like hell to make ’em good,
But still they’re sorta lean.

The ranch went...

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We’ve shared the trail, kicked up some dust,
An’ stood a storm or two.
We’ve rode the plains, the wide frontier,
The easy trails were few.
You’ve listened like some wise old sage
To ever thing I’ve said,
An’ as a friend, supported me,
No matter where it led.

I wished I coulda...

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I'll ride with you awhile, my friend
Until the wind turns cold.
I'm not as young as I once was -
Just feelin' kinda old.

I used to ride straight to the storm -
"Weather be damned", I'd say.
I'd yell an' cuss at wind unseen
An' ride 'til end of day.

I'd...

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You think you’re alone out on the range
Sittin’ silent under starry sky,
Just a marvelin’ at the universe
And wonderin’ ‘bout that ol’ question: why?

You shake your head at worlds of worry,
Knowin’ it ain’t often that you’ll find,
All the answers to your queries
Beneath the clear black sky...

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I walked up to the bunkhouse, beneath a cloudless sky,
searching to find the Christmas star, still shining there on high.
The bunkhouse was warm but lonesome with no other cowboys there.
They had all gone home for Christmas. I pretended not to care.

Christmas carols on the radio...

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They hung around the beer joint with the finest Western wear
with thumbs tucked in their belt loops and such a studly air.
But those boots weren't made for stirrups and were polished to a sheen,
and on those fancy cowboy hats not a sweat stain could be...

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As the pastel moon rises across the midnight blue

a lone wolf’s dark silhouette appears into view

his boast is known from Cowboy to prairie dog

fore this is the night chill that turns to morning fog

the early dawn is thawed by a piping hot cup o’ Joe

No...

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“Back in my day” his stories all would start
I’d  lean in close to listen though I knew ‘em all by heart
He was a living legend, one of Texas’ best
Not just another lawman with a tin star on his chest

He fought along “RIP” Ford &...

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Rather lost, they stare over the divide,
how best to circumnavigate this obstacle?
They can see a path gently sloping down
but it is far off to the north two days ride.

West is back from whence they had come,
east is an impassable cliff of sheer rocks.
They can not...

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Some modern folks, when they hear his name,
will roll their eyes and look ashamed,
thinking the cowboy is uncivilized,
with his hats, and guns, and round-up rides.
That somehow they are beyond the stuff,
to good for the wild, and the rough,
following some unwritten ‘elite’ law,
suppressing the urge to...

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If you'd have lived and worked on Juno Ranch, you’d have come away better for it. It 
may not have seemed like it at the time but Pancho (Uncle Frank) would put it to you, an’ it 
was for you to decide to do it,...

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I was a man, a cold blooded drunk, as they come.
I lived my whole life in a little house on my dad’s farm.
A broke hustler with a defunct bank account,
My career's future was always in doubt.
I married late, at the start of my forties.
It was...

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As the sun rises
a young pioneer saddles his ride.
Mounting his horse
his young bride
his love as he rides
Off to find his herd.
 His proud mare  
goes through the prairie
next to his barb wire.
He wonders in his mind
how far have they strayed.
How many day
must I ride....

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Those condo cowboys are clingin’ to things that used to be,
Starin’ out those city windows or sittin’ on balconies.
They can still smell the country, the ranch, the horses and the range—
At times they wear cowboy hats, though folks might think them strange.

And like those cowboys...

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He was an old Crow Indian
Rejected by all his kin,
That never fit in any world,
But now lived among white men.

He must have been near one hundred
In our scale of years on earth,
And acquired a wealth of wisdom
From the first day of his birth.

All his words...

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