The twists and turns that led me here, rural Missouri, 

a Jewish kid from suburban Chicago—

it's too unlikely, yet, here I am, a seventy year old guy

with a saddle on a rack in the shop.

The combination of those twists & turns

is surely unrepeatable. 

I had some fun along the way, but it was a hard life,

my broken body attests.

What, more than anything, brought me here? 

I ask myself, semi-rhetorically.

Black & white cowboy movies from the 50's—

a vivid imagination?

Perhaps the 70's with the get-back-to-nature

and find yourself state of mind.

Myriad reasons, none jump out more than this: chance,

I saw it and took it.

Regrets? Buckets. Enough to offset the good bits,

I'm not sure.

I look at that saddle with very mixed emotions,

half my life riding, checking cattle, pulling calves, 

putting down cows, the heat, the storms, the winters,

broken bones and trips to ER—

it's dangerous game, here in the Ozarks,

rugged, rocky, timbered, inhospitable land,

this is not Herriott's rolling hills, 

not a trace of tweed to be seen.

The horses I've ridden and broken: 

Scooter, Blaze, Baldy, Cherry, Stormy, Nell,

Cherokee, Little Horse, Sam, Mousey,

Fancy, Jessie . . . and a mule named Veronica!

And the cattle—cows and calves and bulls, let's count 'em,

to the nearest thousand: twelve, twelve thousand,

the vaccinations, too many to count,

the births, the deaths, the trauma, the drama—

no wonder I write about Terri and Lynn and Lin

and Marketa and Colin and Colin's Grandfather—

and all the rest, it takes my mind to happy places,

it's where I do my happy dance.

The saddle, I liken it to a love turned nag,

a reminder of, more than anything, pain,

physical, debilitating pain; but, slow down—

Martha and I, we raised a family here, two kids,

now adults living in L.A., I could have predicted that,

given what they put up with—but until

they were old enough to figure out that born-again

was what they weren't, it was the best possible place—

a little house in the woods

surrounded by nothing but cats and dogs 

and trees and creeks and ponds and wildflowers—

not a neighbor, not a store, not a nothing 

but squirrels and deer and varmints and critters

and wood smoke from the chimney

and Sunday mornings bottle feeding orphan calves 

and horse shows and rodeos and . . .

my mind is racing and I know there are no conclusions

to be reached, no end to the wondering,

just a saddle on a rack in a shop in the middle of nowhere,

or a stone's throw from it.