Best Swaybacked Poems

In Memory of Jimmy Dale Still, Barrel horse rider, KIA,  Song Be, Viet Nam, 1/1/70

Old Bill,
swaybacked, sand burrs in his mane.
He stands no longer hopefull by the fence up near the house,
but follows the shade around the shed,
switching flys.

Nearby the dented barrels
rust rank and...

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I think I get it:
You want me to swallow your acidic avalanche.
Those billion frantic snow globes
of brilliant-clownish confusion.
You want me to rebuild your burned-out shrines. 
Atop broken blue glacial climbs.
Straddle boulders of swaybacked hope and jagged stones of regret. 
You wish me to inhale the...

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Patchwork quilt of a metal roof,
with a hip-shot lean to the left.

Boards, weathered, to a storm cloud grey,
with remnants of red in the cracks.

Generations, hub of the farm.
If only the old barn could talk.

From its birth, in a barn raising,
lumber from a family saw mill.

Mares...

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Naked horses

On the prairie, there are many horses, healthy stallions
galloping about impressing the coy mares.
Under a tree, there are not many trees on the grassland
a few ragged horses with unkempt manes and swaybacked
look as if they have been eating weed and not green grass.
As things...

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The traveling preacher would visit us on a monthly bases,
Unless an urgent need like a wedding, burial, or a birth to welcome new faces.

Most folks in these parts paid with what they raised on their old dirt farms,
He’d preach hellfire and brimstone then we’d all...

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Some were born to be show horses
pampered and highly fussed over 
little work but many accolades
living for tin canned applause..
Some are born thoroughbreds.
living for glory and golden oats
blinders ablaze- racing through life
oblivious to the rattle of time...

Then there's the humble plow horse
overworked and underpaid.
Swaybacked from...

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