Cowboys and Indians

Cowboys and Indians

Saturday afternoon westerns on television,
With horses, and cowboys, and saloons.
Always a fight to be fought,
A reputation to be saved.
Times of vengeance in law.
Scores to be settled.
People get shot.
People get sick.
People die on the TV show,
Then change wardrobe, and go home.

Doc, Festus, Marshall Dillan, and Miss Kitty,
Chester with the gimp in his walk. Newley:
Kansas had people you could count on.

Miles and miles
Of open territory to ride.
Remembering childhood
With a whole life to ride.
Playing cowboys and Indians,
A kid with some rubber tipped arrows,
A shiny silver six shooter
That I could twirl,
Like when I pull
My electric fire stick
From my blue jean holster
To light the bar-be-cue fire.
Practice makes perfect.

Campfires, a herd of cattle
To drive north,
For sale to the highest bidder.
Cook's beef stew,
Coffee by the campfire,
Or on the old metal stove,
With a wooden inferno.
Always chopping wood, mending fences.

People-done bad things.
Leave the past behind.
Start fresh.
Like the saloon girl
Who got herself married up.
Knowing, now, they did
More dancing
In the rooms above the bar,
upstairs, out of sight:
For companionship and money,
The warmth of human touch--
Mostly money.

Crops, cattle, chickens,
Maybe a goat or a donkey.
Feed the chickens in the yard,
While wearing an apron,
Atop a long well-worn dress.
In true view
More simple and plain
Than on this screen of economics.
Barter, cotton, "sky high."

On Saturday afternoons
Gil Favor somehow corrals
The restless stallion, Rowdy Yates.
Wishbone and Mushy tend to food chores.
Pots and pans, sugar and flour,
The chef's requirements housed
In the chuck wagon
Across streams and rivers
Of drinkable fresh water.
Before industry. Before now.

Animals swim--horses, cows,
But humans drown sometime.
Rocks fall in landslides,
Lightening strikes,
Cattle stampede,
Consumption,
And people expire
As the plot dictates.

Life in the old West
Is not a convenient drive-
Through restaurant,
Until the commercials come,
Religiously every eight minutes.

Rowdy finds a pretty girl.
Men ride horses as one entity.
Valuing the sentient equine side,
As if four wheels and a lot of steel
Had four legs and could eat.
The difference compared
To now is quite complete.
Some kind of truth applies to life,
Like rules that never change.

The plains were open, untouched,
Alive with a life all its own.

Indians who spoke
With gesture of hand,
Communicating "how."
Their message was clear.

A white flag means truce.
Having always a chance,
Until the last word is spoken.
Have talk to allay the conflict
Which always errupts between cultures,
Like some Biblical truth:
Finish the story
With a happy ending
In the time allotted.

The guy in the black hat
Always gets his due,
Eating dirt in the street
Before the final commercial.

Drawn into the era
Where it's all so clear:
The difference between
Right and wrong,
As obvious
As between right and left.
Ethics and drive to be strong,
In black and white
On Saturday afternoons.

I come away from it all
With more than the plot,
Or the thrill of a barroom brawl,
In a 1950s Western.
A comfortable feeling sets in,
Feeling more alive from observation,
Having just lived through empathy.

Remember being a kid
With a shiny silver six shooter?
Get shot.
Fall down dead.
Count to five,
Then again to be alive.
Do it again, and again,
Playing cowboys and Indians
With the neighborhood kids
Way back when.

It's only a little
Different now.
Genres change,
Plot structure and timing remain.

Life and ethics
Seem less clear
In color and high definition.