Old Cowboy Poems

The wind knows the rider before the horse does. Long before sunup, boots scuff barnwood and the rawhide creaks with memory. A buckaroo doesn’t announce...

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...For two weeks Lester worked that pyrite vein,
and every day a brand new dollar came,
at the end he hug dug out two cart’s worth,
said Higgs,...

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Lester sat in Lisa’s café that morn,
his eyes mindlessly staring out the door,
it was July of 1889,
and new work young Lester now had to find.

He’d...

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Enveloping cliche’s
Without a building in the night
The locust bind
Inside your socks
Chasing you back
You not old, your hapless
And there in the grave
You hold on time
Running away...

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We’re all so young even the ‘old hands’
Can’t imagine a time with no rope in their hand
 
It’s riding with heart and unflagging spirit revealed
That’s...

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A cowboy stormed into town
He seems to be hell bound
To challenge and fight
Cuz he was uptight
But he came to an end
When he challenged an old...

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                     'twuz 'hind an orchard
...

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Cowpoke
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

Sleep, old man...
your day has long since passed.
The endless plains,
cool midnight rains
and changeless ragged cows
alone remain
of what once was.

You...

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Dalton lived in the north Texas plain,
working a ranch he owned for five years,
a small spread, but it brought some money in,
some solace after all...

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The spirit of the old west
a cowboy of song
He sings a pleasant tenor on the world and its wrongs

And he lifts up the spirits when...

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Death Of The Old Cowboy On The Lonesome Range

Ravenous wolf pack, ripping and tearing
red-stain bloody meat from his dead horse flank
much better the dead horse...

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There’s many a tale that spreads across the night
when the sun o’er the plains yields to campfire light. 
Tales about cowboys, who once roamed the...

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From the old rockin’ chair
came the sound of his snores
that rattled the windows
and vibrated the doors

She looked o’er her glasses
but kept counting her stitch
as she...

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I always hear the sound of guitars strumming
harmonica music and cowboys humming
when I feel a warm night breeze upon my face

Whenever I look at a...

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Henry started a punchin’ 
at the ripe old age of 15
There just ain’t no way of knowin’
all of the things he’s done and seen

All those...

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