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Ridden Hard, Put Up Wet
Ridden Hard, Put Up Wet
Worn down landscape
Ridden hard and put up wet over eons of time.
Buttes interspersed with ravines and wadis,
Vast irregular symmetry.
Clumps of purple blue green sage
To have been seen by the riders of olden times.
Clusters scattered randomly.
A patchwork without design
Covering endlessly to the horizon
Intermingled with beef and horse.
The buttes come in irregular waves of shapes and sizes.
Conical breasts sprung up in ridges,
Or sometimes alone at the sky line.
Isolated flat tops
Or long Capetown table mountains;
African ant hill shapes,
Crenulated with skirts of vertical old rivulet stripes.
The overstory of bare hard scrabble thin land
Draped to the side of the ravines
Exposing the layers of understory limestone below.
Sentinel wood line posts, strong with wire, guard the narrow highway
That rolls with the landscape.
Occasional cotton wood ribbons
Crosses the roadway over the sign ‘Dry Run Creek’ which still remains dry until the rain comes.
All this
Served under the banner of blue sky
Shredded with a mare’s tail wisp of clouds
7/13/2020
Copyright ©
David Holmes
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