Once you slapped leather
with the best, blew a gun
from a man's hand
at a hundred paces.
Now adolescent kids flip butts
at your tarnished silver spurs.
You ride your Pinto to the post office
to collect social security checks,
while Silver contentedly chews
the cud of his second childhood.
Tonto, your sidekick, shoots
the breeze with a .22
in the happy hunting grounds.
Unmasked man, the pistol you used
to shoot silver bullets with
squirts water. The new sheriff's
electronic gear and crime lab vans
put you out to pasture.
You can't catch rustlers nowadays
twirling a rope and hoisting
a six shooter. Before ranchers
get wise crooks in pinstripe hire
helicopters and semis to steal
half a herd.
Maybe the movies will get you
to tend the last custard stand
in the west Text desert,
before the coyotes call out
over high strung phone wires
to tell you you're through.