I think he knows I’m alive, having come down
The three steps of the back porch
And given me a good once over. All afternoon
He’s been moving back and forth,
Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,
While all about him the great fields tumble
To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky
To be where he is, wild with all that happens.
He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows
Living in the blond heart of the wheat.
This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires
Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots,
Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter
On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.

A collective family myth
passed down across generations
takes on the polished gleam of truth,
and memories become legend.

The legend of black sod-busters
on a piece of red soil they own
in a township of black ranchers.
Their legendary rodeo.

GRAND ENTRY

Two Stars and Stripes flutter into
the arena, carried by two
men in jeans, red shirts, white Stetsons.
Guiding their horses with left hands,
holding the flagstaffs in their rights,
their backs straight and tall, their faces,
their chestnut faces, beautiful
in the light of the setting sun.

After them, two by two,
banners waving, hooves raising dust,
ride the Horse People of Boley,
a varicolored promenade.
They canter once around the ring,
then they circle into the sky.

MUTTON BUSTING

In the cluster of five-year-old
contenders wearing life jackets
and bicycle helmets, paper
numbers safety-pinned to their backs,
you line up one by one for a turn
to hang on tight with your legs squeezed
at the sheep’s broad middle, fingers
holding handfuls of deep, warm wool
as the sheep destiny presents
runs you out to cheering applause.
Whether you’ll fall on top of it,
or it on you, you won’t fall far.
You have no front teeth anyway,
and a brown clown gone pick you up.

BAREBACK RIDING

This horse was bred and born to buck.
He’s a good horse, he’ll give you points.
Gloved hand in the rigging’s handle,
bare brown hand waving in the air,
you whir your spurs at his shoulders
as he leaps, twists, and jolts your bones.
Four seconds or four hundred years.
But if you can get up and slap
the dust off your jeans with your hat,
the future’s eyes, looking at you,
will fill with forevering light:
light that will make generations
of proud brown people remember
the Black Horse People of Boley.

BULLDOGGING

In truth there’s seldom a reason
for a man to wrestle a steer,
unless he’s a real ranch cowboy
dealing with ornery power.
Maybe, while rounding up the herd,
he bumps heads with testosterone,
and it’s testosterone-vs.-
testosterone. Bill Pickett learned,
watching dogs on a Boley ranch,
that sometimes you’ve got to bulldog
a hardhead with a kiss of pain.
Today, you slide from horse onto
the fleeing steer, grab his horns, pull
five hundred pounds of muscle down.

TEAM ROPING, CALF ROPING, STEER ROPING

Roping always involves a team,
whether it’s two men or women
or one human and one smart horse.
The aim: to bring down and hog-tie
a big scared baby of a calf
or a full-grown and pissed-off steer.
You gallop out swinging your loop
with one hand, the other holding
the slack and the unneeded reins.
You down him with a careful toss,
tie three of his hooves together,
step back with wide arms and a grin.
A rope isn’t always a noose:
ropes in brown hands can be lassos.

SADDLE BRONC RIDING

It’s not the leather riding gloves
and it’s not the fringed buckskin chaps,
not the worn-in and dusty boots,
not the spurs’ blunted silver stars,
not the 10x wide-brimmed straw hat
(both winged helmet and regal crown):
it’s not clothes that make the cowboy.
It’s something behind a bronzed face,
in the level gaze from dark eyes,
and, of course, it’s heart that puts you,
the reins in one hand, one hand free,
waving with the horse’s rhythm,
your heels spurring from neck to flank,
on this bronc called America.

BARREL RACING

Thunder explodes out of the chute.
Mane and tail whip in the speed wind,
agile hooves pound a swift tempo
circling around the first barrel.
One hand grips the horn, the other
communicates with the taut reins,
though your thighs give the best guidance,
telling your horse to maneuver
in circles that hug the barrels.
Three barrels, a tight cloverleaf
you gallop through with one joined will.
This contest pits you and your horse
against the clock and your best time.
Sister, your dreadlocks are flying!

PONY EXPRESS

Before telegraph, news traveled
from mouth to ear, from hand to hand.
News arrived old. From sea to sea
took weeks, unless carried by boys
stationed along the stagecoach route
to race a cross-country relay.
Your pulse gallops toward the handoff,
when your teammate takes the baton
and the noise and flurry go on
without you. Your leg run, you and
your horse (your partner, your friend) stand
encompassed in adrenalin,
watching, as the Ancestors must,
unable to help, but cheering.

TENNESSEE WALKER

Let’s hear it for the barrel men,
for the bullfighters, for the clowns,
for the men on the side ready
to run toward trouble. Give it up
for the musical director
(thanks for the hip-hop, bro!). And for
the announcer and all the folks
cheering in the stands. That baby
wearing a tiny cowboy hat.
That man the same black as his horse,
in that white suit and fedora.
His Tennessee Walker’s proud gait
as he nods to his own rhythm,
tail an ebony waterfall.

BULL RIDING

Boley bulls are bred for bucking,
bred to be mean, to be “Bad Boys.”
They teach you to sit strong, hold on,
and with one hand reach for the sky.
After riding a Boley bull
a cowboy thinks, Hell, I’ve been there.
I’ve held the bull-rope, raked my spurs,
while that bad boy tried to kill me.
A ton of Brahma seeing red
gives you a whole new perspective,
a who-you-think-you-talking-to
fearlessness. You’ve seen the bull’s eye:
you know you can’t die more than once.
You’ve lived through eight Mississippis.

Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,
decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.

As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,
inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.

Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping 'tween floorboards,
wrapping around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips.

Engines grinding, rotating, smokin', gotta pull back some.
Natural minds are lost at the mere sight of ringing true hips.

Gotta love us girls, just struttin' down Manhattan streets
killing the menfolk with a dose of that stinging view. Hips.

Crying 'bout getting old—Patricia, you need to get up off
what God gave you. Say a prayer and start slinging. Cue hips.

to crave what the light does crave
to shelter, to flee
to gain desire of every splayed leaf
to calm cattle, to heat the mare
to coax dead flies back from slumber
to turn the gaze of each opened bud
to ripe the fruit to rot the fruit
and drive down under the earth
to lord gentle dust
to lend a glancing grace to llamas
to gather dampness from fields
and divide birds
and divide the ewes from slaughter
and raise the corn and bend the wheat
and drive tractors to ruin
burnish the fox, brother the hawk
shed the snake, bloom the weed
and drive all wind diurnal
to blanch the fire and clot the cloud
to husk, to harvest,
sheave and chaff
to choose the bird
and voice the bird
to sing us, veery, into darkness