The Lonesome Cowboy
The lonesome cowboy, he’s out on a roam.
With thirty miles of fence to mend, and today’s grown old.
He finds an old cotton tree, says: “Guess here tonight I’ll be…”
He throws down his saddle and poke,
pulls out some hard tack, coffee and a smoke,
and the frayed-edged letter from Maria, the only one who wrote.
The lonesome cowboy, he’ll pass the night away,
The Hotel of a Million Stars, that’s where he likes to stay.
He don’t got no house, don’t pay no rent.
Out on the range, he’s so content.
A new moon’s on the rise, he’s searching the starry sky,
Thinking about Maria, and her boy, who’s got his eyes.
The lonesome cowboy he’s tired, he calls it a day.
Lays down his head to rest, he dreams the night away,
of Colorado, and pasture sweet, tall green grass, wading through waste deep.
On his cow horse with his cow dog, the cowboy drives ‘em on,
up to Colorado from New Mexico, he’s dreaming on and on and on.
The lonesome cowboy, he’ll pass his life away.
He’ll be riding herd, and mending fence, he’ll even put up some hay.
He don’t like concrete, it kind of hurts his feet.
His cowboy boots don’t wear even on a street.
There’s just one thing that he wants. That’s to find the love he lost.
He’s whispering to the wind, and he sends her his kind thoughts.
Yea, he’s whisperin’ to the wind, and he sends her his kind thoughts.
Yea, he’s whisperin’ to the wind, and he sends her his kind thoughts.
Going to Maria, Maria…
Espero te, siempre, mi amor, mi amor perdido, Maria…
(I’ll wait for you, forever, my love, my lost love, Maria)
Arthur Davenport’s musical career spans 30 years of songwriting and
performance. He first started playing in the Washington D.C. folk
scene in the 1980′s and then moved on to the southwest scene during
the 90′s while living in New Mexico.
Arthur has been featured on National Public Radio performing his song,
“Lonesome Cowboy,” specially written for a cowboy music compilation
album entitled “‘Round-em Up!” Arthur now lives in Hawai’i where he
has been a house musician at the Hilo Palace Theater for the past ten
years.
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A LACY VICTORIAN VALENTINE
Sweet Elizabeth
Can you feel the ride and rise of the sun
This mid-February day bucking against
The rusted spur and crumbling saddle of Jack Frost?
We done got the heifers all calved
Mostly in the ice of January nights
I reached into more than one cow
Afraid with the strange pain spewing new life onto the prairie
Turning her calf to touch light.
The coyotes so full of after birth
Gave the wobbly newborns a free pass
To rise and walk with their mothers.
The sun is frisking more each day
And a tired cowboy can hope for a short ride its in warm rays
To ask you to wander with him a while behind the old barn
To that spot I know where the first buttercups each year
Slip up between the patches of melting snow
I put on my new jeans and a clean shirt and my Sunday go to meeting Stetson
Cleaned the mud off my boots and even shined them.
It shore would be nice if you could walk with me
In the mothering breeze near
That weather beaten barn
With its sides testifying for Mail Pouch tobacco
“Treat yourself to the best”
In fading red and yellow painted by a dead hand some half century ago
Persisting like my feelings for you as the years say adios
To yesterday’s yearlings.
I wanted to share this lacy Victorian valentine
My great granddaddy gave my great grandmamma
Here on the ranch,
He warn’t no better with words than I am
But the pink lace and the frills and the buttercups
Would talk his feelings for her a whole lot better than his wind chapped lips
And tongue rusted from the silence of riding alone.
Tyson West is a is a traditional western poet whose aesthetic continually shape shifts. He watches the Northwest with veiled and hooded lynx eyes, broods among the conifers and quarrels with Coyote. He has a degree in history, but writes a variety of poetry styles, and has written a series of poems around Spokane Garry who is our local magical Indian. One of Tyson’s Western poems was published in Spoke Magazine called “Floorshow”, which is based on a picture of a 1922 floorshow in the Davenport Hotel which photo you can find on line. He lives in the middle of Eastern Washington, which is definitely cowboy country. There are two Washingtons, Eastern and Western, and they are as different as a Mocah Mint Latte with organic goats milk and black boiled coffee at a chuck wagon fire.
