Panhandle

Sometimes it gets so large
out here that you can plainly

see just how someone could saddle
up at night and race on off

into the empty, shooting at the stars --
and why, when we all tracked them

down a few days later, sprawled
in that ravine, clearly there was nothing

for it, after much palaver, but to put
them both out of their misery:

the horse nigh dead, all busted
up, the man still breathing but

plumb useless in his head and not
about to mend anytime soon.


-- Allan Douglass Coleman