If Poetry were an Oater

Nothing much good going on up there
in the rainless place where ideas
are desert thistle.
Tumbleweeds tumble. Cactus squat bare
in the acrid dust, cued for nothing by
a spaghetti western whistle.

Sometimes rustlers flee. The widow’s cattle are lowing.
The black-hatted heavy hangs til high noon
in town,
his silver spurs jangling no perfect ear of sound.
Perspectives shift. There are shadows—tensions growing
in the metaphor saloon,

where cold sasprilluh could probably soothe my itchy
trigger finger. I mosey, make my entrance.
I gently
slap the smokewagon’s leather holster and take a stance
to stare down the baddy who blocks my way
to Miss Kitty, our room upstairs, and another day.