In Arizona: Cowboy Poets

By Michael Riley

A chilly predawn darkness blankets the small cowboy camp called Twin Buttes, a cedar-covered knoll in the high desert of northwest Arizona. Another day of the fall roundup at the Double O Ranch begins as six sleepy cowpunchers stir from their bedrolls and head for the campfire's warm glow. Beyond the flames is the covered cook wagon, sides of beef hanging outside and a bag of flour sitting within. After wolfing down biscuits, meat and gravy, the six men pull on their chaps and walk slowly to the corral to saddle the horses and head 'em out.

Cowpuncher Ross Knox stays behind, watching the coming dawn. Daylight reveals a clash of cultures, old and new. Less than 50 ft. from the fire stands a pickup truck that hauls the cook wagon from camp to camp. In the distance, 18-wheelers fly down Interstate 40. As his friends ride off to round up cattle, Knox ambles back to the fire for another cup of coffee.

Like the pickup truck and Interstate 40, Knox fails to fit Hollywood's western stereotype: he is a cowboy poet. Despite the apparent oxymoron, verse has its place on the range, and Knox and his fellow horseback balladeers capture well the cowboy's changing world.

Long fences now divide ranches that once ran over unbroken plains. Trailers haul horses from one job to another; those long treks in the saddle, sometimes upwards of 1,200 miles, are a thing of the past. Beef prices have plummeted. Notes Knox: "You sell a cow for $300; you got $600 in her. It's hard to make a living that way." With salaries ranging between $500 and $800 a month, cowboys don't get rich either, a fact that recently prompted Knox to move from solely punching cows to shoeing horses and doing daywork.

After working some 30 jobs in nine Western states in the past 14 years, Knox understands the modern cowboy, and his poetry speaks the plains' truths. As he writes in a poem called The Dying Times: "Any man makin' a living by punchin' cows/ Will know what I mean when I say/ The good times that's been had are comin' to an end;/ Friends, we've about reached that day." His voice is not alone.

Research for a recent anthology, Cowboy Poetry: A Gathering, by Hal Cannon of the Western Folklife Center in Salt Lake City, turned up about 5,000 poems by contemporary cowboys (known in their slang as waddies) and ranchers. "If you got to talking to most cowboys, they'd admit they write 'em," says Knox. "I think some of the meanest, toughest sons of bitches around write poetry." The first poem Knox penned more than a decade ago describes a barroom brawl he lost, and he's been at it ever since.

Until about 18 months ago, Knox was a nomadic cowpuncher. His rambling philosophy: "There are only two good ranches--the one you've left and the one you're goin' to." Though he's settled with his wife Joni in a corner of Arizona, his cowboy blood still runs thick. With great pride, he pulls his battered steel spurs from the tack-room wall and brushes away the dirt. As he points out the silver-inlaid design and the gold initials R.L.K., he smiles at all the times he's worn them with a swagger. He hangs them on the wall with a jangle, his eyes passing again over his bridles, bits and well-worn leather saddle.

Most cowboy poems speak of real events and people, from bucking horses and cagey cows to old Stetson hats and long winter travels. Although they focus on the ordinary stuff of life, their truths, at least to cowboys, seem no less eternal than those penned by William Shakespeare. Some cowboy poems are bust-a-gut funny; a few are downright dirty. And some are just plain awful. But many carry an honest, primitive power, like these lines from Vern Mortensen's Range Cow in Winter:

Have you listened still on a desert hill At the close of a bitter day, When the orange sun in wispy clouds Was set in a greenish haze? In a cold white world of deepening drifts That cover the land like a pall, Then the plaintive bawl of a hungry cow Is the loneliest sound of all![*]

Knox has composed all but one of his poems while in the saddle, with the steady clip-clop cadence of the horse guiding the iambs and a simple rhyme making the words easy to remember. This is crucial, for cowboys tell poems; they don't recite them. They can be found preserving this oral tradition in a dusky bar or a seedy motel. Says Knox: "I've never in my life sat around a campfire and asked somebody to tell a poem."

But he has been known to tell them at the Black Cat bar, one of the two wateringholes in tiny Seligman, Ariz., with a longneck Budweiser in front of him. One recent night, after gently tapping some Bull Durham tobacco into his rolling paper, Knox pulled tight the yellow drawstrings on the pouch. He moistened the paper, rolled the cigarette, lit it. Then he leaned over the bar and, in a soft voice, recited an old Bruce Kiskaddon verse about the dangers of an enraged cow: "Think a cow boy cain't run? Well you aint seen one sail/ When a cow blows her nose on some waddy's shirt tail."

It's little surprise that cowboys write poetry. Knox has spent hours in the saddle watching the south end of a herd moving north, with plenty of time to roll phrases around on his tongue. He is observant, a necessity for the writing of verse or the tracking of cows. Good poetry demands good drama, and that is no stranger to Knox either.

Five hours have passed since the riders left Twin Buttes. A hot autumn sun has burned away the dawn's biting chill, and the cowboys have gathered about 100 head of cattle from among the cedars and hillocks. Knox watches as they herd the cattle into a dusty pen. On horseback the cowpunchers separate five long-eared calves that escaped spring branding and guide them, along with their mothers and a few strays, into a smaller enclosure.

With branding time near, the tension grows thick. One waddie fires the propane to heat the branding iron, while another scrapes his knife across a whetstone. Three others climb atop their mounts to lasso the calves from among the dozen skittish critters in the tight pen. One crazy cow, a 1,500-lb. mother with twisting horns sharpened for the gore, tries twice to leap the fence but fails, landing with a thud hard enough to shake your ancestors.

Knox, one eye on the nervous mom, stands ready to throw a calf as soon as two twirling lariats snag it, front and back. When the ropes hit their mark, Knox dashes out, yanks the tail and upends the bawling animal. Before the dust can rise, Knox is on his knees, pinning a front leg back to immobilize the calf. Other cowpunchers burn the brand, vaccinate the animal and castrate it. No wasted motion, no unnecessary energy.

Branding, like ballet, becomes poetry in motion, a slick sequence of moves that turn a mere job into an art form. Whether breaking broncs or chasing wild cows across cedar-infested slopes, punching cows demands courage, precision and a certain elan. Ross Knox understands the cowboy's art. So does fellow Poet Georgie Sicking:

He never let a cow outfigure him And never missed a loop. He always kept cattle under control Like chickens in a coop. He was never in the right place at the wrong Time or in anybody 's way. For working cattle he just naturally knew When to move and when to stay[*]

--By Michael Riley