Member Poem

Evening in Wyoming
 
 
 
Cody is quiet,
the view from this grandstand bench.
But below, banners circle the arena floor
to remind of smokeless tobacco, beer, jeans.
Here for saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling,
wondering how one-hundred-seventy pounds
of man tethers to two-thousand pounds of beef.
It’s the forearm, of course, like lobster claws,
one’s always bigger than the other.  
Shane and Jake and Clay battle the likes of
Crooked Nose and Coal Dust and Dirty Dan.
Then a teenager mounting a bull on a bet,
soon thrown and now unconscious.
Small from this perch,
a lone ambulance coming silent from town,
red and orange cutting the dusk to discover
just a rattled head and dusty clothes.
 
And a question:
Is courage's value diminished by experience?
 
But at the beginning,
a little boy standing next to the announcer,
feet together, head down, wringing his hands.
His worry unnecessary—we were all for him.
He’d made a wish to see a rodeo and it had come true.
Then each of us made one.
 
 
originally Loudoun County Public Library’s 2015 Rhyme On! Poetry Anthology