Cowboy

There was a cowboy in the city today,
with a leather swagger
and a face
of broken canyons.

It isn’t the hurried
structures
that brought him here.
For the cowboy,
his palms
bring
sympathetic
cues.
With a fox shimmer
dart,
he
releases
rusted
hatches
from wired cages.

And he
sees us,
dancing as we
cry
crying from paper\cuts
and
stolen wisdom.
Smothered into the hands,
the hands of anxious strangers.

Upright,

he stands close by,
his smile:
melted winks,
retreating
into
painted
archways.

The cowboys days
of hustling are
laughing,
and
settling
in the sand beds
of the
Snake River.