singed.

Cowboys
are just people

living in nostalgia,
longing for the days

when they loved the
sun without remembering

that it could burn them;
when the sun seemingly loved them back.

when their innocence was
new

and they
roamed without knowing

what could befall them.
Cowboys

are just people
who move forward

in slow motion,
taking two steps forward

and looking back,
made of the salt of the Earth.

Maybe this is why
I have loved so many

of them,
because Poets and Cowboys

look up at the blue sky
and remember the sun

can scorch
them.

Maybe this is
why

I always look for
burns and Cowboys

and the
sun.

Cowboys must be descended
from the people turned to salt

in The bible.
Sodom.

Gomorrah. Nostalgia,
is their downfall and their end

but they just have to look back.
This sense of innocence

of a tragic
past; forgiveness, escape,

sacrifice for love.
Just one more look.

But there is no escape
in dissolving,

there is no love
in disintegrating.

Though love disappears
quite frequently–

ask any
Cowboy.

And then there’s
me,

somewhere between
all these cowboys

and the sunsets
that everyone else sees.

Not quite living looking back,
not quite headed for the

horizon; just enjoying
the rush of the breeze,

and the passing of
the trees

as we ride along. I often wonder why
people aren’t

looking around,
this journey has been long.

I often
wonder why people aren’t

paying attention to now,
instead of the horizon

which has never
moved from the distance

no matter how far
forward we march.

Maybe there are some people that just need
to look somewhere else,

maybe some people live in fear of dissolving
into a calcium chloride cloud,

clearing the horizon
and ceasing to be seen again.

Here is to the Cowboys
who do not care if they dissolve

into nothing, so long
as they get to look the direction

they aren’t
going, to remember

having never been
burned.