"The Home Place" and "Requiem"- two Cowboy Western poems by roger Traweek.er Traweek

      REQUIEM
                      by

Roger L. Traweek
© November 2000

A rider stopped by here today. A boy that I once knew
Got down to have a look around. Well, I looked him over, too.
'Course he's a man now, an' I see that Time has had its way;
‘Cuz his walk is slower than it was, and his hair is turning gray.
There’s a sadness in his eyes for sure, an’ he’s put on some weight,
And he doesn’t look as tall somehow, standin’ out there at the gate.
Like me, I guess he's gotten old, and wrinkles took the place
Of the bloom of youth and better times...I am the old home place.

I’m wonderin’ why you came today? To spend some time alone
With ghosts of memories? To hold a requiem of your own?
Or are you only passin' through with time upon your hands,
A ghost yourself, like those before whose spirits haunt this land?
Yet there's something 'bout the easy way you lift the gate and then
Close it with a gentle kick tells me you’re ‘home’ again.
And if you are, Son, while you’re here, I’ll try to help you see
The parts of you I’ve held inside since you left them here with me.

Inside these walls which held you close, you gather up the past:
As dusty rooms call out to you, ‘Son, you’re home at last.’
Here’s where you sat for supper, served up with your mom’s love;
And over there you hung your coat and parked your boots and gloves.
At Christmas time the tree stood here, and the excitement in your face
When Santa came, lit up the room and filled its every space.
In this room where you dreamed your dreams and slept, a small gray mouse
Is my only company these days, for I’m a lonely house.

Though the old tin tub is now long gone, here’s a memory sharp and clear:
By amber glow of soft lamplight you took your baths just here;
And here, you sat at nightfall and let your imagination go,
As you laughed and sang songs with your dad to the family radio.
Love and Home were all you knew and all you needed then;
How sharp the pain of knowing who we are and who we’ve been!
Though I feel it too, best leave it to these memories to explain
The hollow shells we’ve now become - where only they remain.

Pausing in the bunkhouse now, the traces of a smile
Cross your face and give you cause to linger there awhile;
Brotherhood remembered, easy laughter without care,
Before the innocence was lost, and troubled dreams were rare.
The weathered barn still wears its brands - burnt scars upon Time’s face,
Bearing silent testimony to another time and place,
While you remember white-faced calves and each year’s hopeful start.
Oh, little cowboy, don’t you see, you’re branded on your heart?

The horsebarn and the corral outside where Champ and you first met
To take each other’s measure...you never will forget
How pinto horse and buckeroo bent to each other’s will,
When you were twelve and he was two... so long ago, yet still
You hear him softly calling for his grain at end of day,
And you rub his ear...then quietly...the moment fades away.
Through Life’s meanderings currents surge against the passing years,
Carving memories from the bedrock...sluicing Time away with tears.

And
      a
       tear
            begins
                     to
                       trickle
                               down
                                      the
                                         creases
                                                   in
                                                      your
                                                            face...
I’m glad you came.....I’m always here......

     I am the old home place.

         THE HOME PLACE

I stopped at the old home place today to pass a little time;
Both of us now show our age -- a long ways past our prime.
Since Grandad put his roots down here, a hundred years have passed;
Three generations called it "home"; mine will likely be the last,
Though not the first to claim this place; the Cheyenne and the Sioux
Loved this land and danced their dance, and they must miss it, too.
Our souls are joined in this good earth where no one really leaves,
Yet Time rolls on, the sands run out, the generations grieve.

Abandoned and neglected now, the living here is done,
No one keeps the home fires burning to greet a wandering son.
It sees the seasons come and go, silent and alone,
A ghost ship adrift in a sea of grass, now tossed and overgrown;
Its windows stare out vacantly, and no light shows within,
To light the night or warm with pride for the home it once had been.
The sunburned paint is peeling; once tidy rooms now gather dust,
Where in bygone days our family thrived on faith and love and trust.

Inside, I wander through the rooms, awash in memories;
The fun and laughter I still recall with clarity and ease.
I can hear my mother humming as she went about her chores,
Cooking, mending, and polishing those worn linoleum floors.
The kitchen was her palace where she reigned as sovereign queen,
And we ate like kings on simple fare, not knowing times were lean.
She lent courage, grace, and comfort to our simple way of life,
And held her tears and hid her fears, good mother and good wife.

My dad worked hard from dawn to dark and did it every day,
Broad shoulders in a rancher's world of horses, cows, and hay.
With stubbornness and steady hand he steered our family's course
Through Depression, drought, and other fits of Nature's fickle force.
Where Dad's chair sat, a patient spider plays a waiting game,
As Grandad did for forty years, and then Dad did the same,
Until my brother took it up as keeper of the trust;
Their unraveled dreams now lie among the cobwebs and the dust.

In the bunkhouse where we brothers slept I hear a keening noise,
The mournful moan of prairie wind grieving for those missing boys.
The calving shed is falling down, in its roof a gaping hole;
As snow and rain and sun and wind exact their steady toll;
Where new-born calves in decades past drew first breath safe within,
And stood on trembling legs to fall and struggle up again,
Now only relics of those days remain as memories pale;
A burlap bag, a tattered rope, hang stiffly from a nail.

The horse barn stands in protest and with false hope bravely waits
For return of horse and rider through the sagging corral gates.
In muffled cadence hoofbeats mark the life I left behind,
Where now Champ and Snips and Rocket gallop only in my mind.
Today I stand between two worlds, as different as white from black;
One beckons me to turn around; the other calls me back.
But memories change...are milled by Time...as the river wears the stone,
And I know nothing stays forever, when it's too long left alone.

                                         © November 1999, Roger L. Traweek