Page One
The following three poems are from Barker's first book, Vientos de las Sierras
(Winds of the Mountains): Poems of New Mexico, published by him in 1924, p.
16).
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Oh, I've sat on hard park benches and in springy Morris chairs,
And on silken, flowered mats in far Japan;
I have parked my lazy carcass in the cars of millionaires,
And I've ridden houdahs in the French Soudan.
On a swivel in an office--in a steamer chair at sea--
Why, I've even sat and dreamed on woodland moss,
But there's just one kind of sittin' that is always home to me:
That's a-straddle of a good old saddle hoss.
Just a-lopin' through the sage-brush where the purple mesas rise,
Or a helpin' keep a cow herd on the go--
When there's saddle leather creakin' I ain't heavin' any sighs,
'Cause I've got my seat in heaven here below!
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Oh, the bloom on the sage up Horse Thief Creek
Is as high as a man could straddle,
And summer is greening old Rainbow Peak,
And me with a desk for a saddle!
There's the smell of the herd at Pecos Town,
A-drifting to summer ranges;
And the odor of oak from foothills brown,
And fir where the timber changes.
There's bawling of calves at the H Bar Cross,
And wind in the June grass rippling--
But here I sit with a spectacled boss,
A-roundin' up Keats and Kipling!
Oh, out on the mesas the punchers ride,
Their saddles and chaps are creaking--
Where men learn comradeship side by side,
With never a need for speaking.
The grind of the cities is in my ears,
Wild chatter all jumbled together,
But my heart is lonesome and darn near tears,
For the feel of saddle leather.
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Oh, songs of spring that poets sing
Are sweet as childish prattle,
But the time I hear most every year
Is the bawling of rawboned cattle.
When winter snow decides to go
From mesa, plain and valley,
It leaves hills bleak, and cows so weak
They ain't got strength to rally.
Pore bags of bones--they can't eat stones--
The grass ain't started growing,
And as we ride, on every side,
We hear their hungry lowing.
Some fall in bogs, some back of logs,
Some die before we find 'em.
The coyotes know how pore cows go,
And sneak along behind 'em.
Us punchers fight both day and night
To help cows fill their paunches.
From pools of mud that chill their blood
We tail 'em from their haunches.
Pore cows ain't such an awful much--
Our boss might stand the losses--
But when they bawl, we go--that's all--
Our hearts are like our boss's.
And so the song spring brings along
To me ain't lovers' prattle:
The tune I hear when spring is here
Is the bawling of hungry cattle.
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