Hung over from pitchers of Margaritas,
Chimayo cocktails, and crockery cruets of hot saki,
the samurai cowboy rises early and drinks
a cowcamp potful of Guatemalan roast
to Ian Tyson singing Gallo del Cielo. He loves
this ballad of the gladiator rooster of heaven,
its heart for the battle, and how,
facing the wicked black, it sinks
a gaff into Zorro’s shiny breast.
He loves how they collide and lift
into a twister of wings, beaks, claws and squawks
37 times, like rounds between bare-knucklers,
‘til Gallo del Cielo’s valiant death. He allows
how it’s the lilt and lingo, the dance,
the passion that makes this song
his anthem. Riding or writing,
poem or rodeo, he craves the heart-pummeling,
liver-risking, soul-staking physical.

She, in black kimono, serenely irons
the denim dress she’ll wear to work
in Santa Fe with snakeskin, lavender,
scallop-top Tony Lamas. She basks in
the décor of her adobe-lodgepole house,
a collage of trappings, art, and kitsch—
the Orient with cowboy West—
of braided rawhide reatas, of soft
McCarty woven from mane hair, of Hopi baskets
from banana yucca, of origami and horse clocks,
Navajo rugs, kachina and kokeshi dolls,
of bonsai and sprigs of silk cherry blossoms,

peyote buttons to fend off pesky spirits,
cholla skeleton and bamboo furniture, Zuni fetish,
and Kamikaze kite. She irons with a grin,
watching him strut and fly
on adrenalined memories of old broncs
and new love, on caffeine and fiery lyrics.

He paces in the living room his pre-ride
ritual behind the chutes. He slashes
spurstrokes in his stockinged feet, left
then right, his high-stepping samurai stride,
dexterous as a cricket, toes turned out,
heels gripping against the shock-
tremor of the bronc’s shoulders. He holds
his free hand high, his riding arm flexed,
fist clenched, against his trophy buckle,
to an imaginary bareback riggin’, his teeth clamped,
spitfire through the slits of his eyes
as he slashes and slashes: the rodeo poet—
only a skosh mad from living too long
alone to spur the broncs—gassing it
from Missoula to Tesuque
in his antique cowboy cadillac
to cross pastoral Japanese with roughstock sonnet
with love for this geisha cowgal in blond.

                                                For Elizabeth Dear

From Roughstock Sonnets (Lowell Press, 1989)
© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.