We write a lot of poems about cowboys.
This one's called Aliso Springs, which is south of town
in the Tumacacori Mountains.
"When the cowboys come down to drink there,
their hands turn blue in the water.
Behind them, their curious horses melt into windows patch
by patch, and blow away paper bags into the thorns.
Oh, for years they are perched on the treeless peaks,
in cabins like wrecked violins, watching the cattle
below stumble over the worn hills, laying down their horns,
mad to the knees.
And beyond, on their chests, the squares of the pecan groves.
Girls playing trumpets once a year, raving green.
And so they come, letting themselves down
by their belts over the rock faces.
Jumping in their spurs from cliff to cliff.
To kneel in the swampy place of grubs, and dead skunks,
and sycamore leaves, and watch their heel prints
fill behind them.
To lift to their eyes the sliding clouds of their faces."