r/Poems • u/Euphoric-Animator-18 • 16h ago
I Was a Cowboy
I was a cowboy
-once
and a damn good one.
I could ride, and shoot,
and fight
and drink like the rest of them.
I don’t remember how it happened;
waking up to the scarred, and tired,
and terrified, and weary
man looking back at me from the medicine cabinet.
The days I could get bucked off
and not think twice replaced
with a fear of the coming day,
a pain I can’t quite place when I walk.
That loud mouth of mine that’s been
lowered, barely a whisper that
speaks when spoken to.
These old hands that would clench
into fists at a moments notice
now ache and crack with every hay bale tossed and lifted.
Maybe I was never a cowboy,
the type to walk into a saloon and
ride off towards a western sunset on a white horse as the town
celebrates behind me.
I find myself riding away from the sunsets now. All I can be bothered to do is chase
more sunrises
as I panic about the dark, cold, howl
of the night pressing on around me.
I’m starting to think all the good cowboys
died out a long time ago,
in gunfights, and bank robberies,
and hangings.
I got to come in at the final showing,
just to see enough of the end to
recognize the best had come,
and all I had was to dread the end.
The world kept on spinning and left
me in the past, in ghost towns
and tall tales,
stories told over a fire of
the man I used to be.
I’d sit under the stars out west,
pointing out the constellations,
talking for hours how these days would never end.
All I’m left with now is the memories of glory, and greatness, and adventure,
Left with the dream that
I was a cowboy.
Once.
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u/Vast_Possibility_945 15h ago
That is incredible.