A Cowboy Song

by Charles Causley

Young boys are not automatically drawn to poetry. In fact, the appreciation of poetry for anyone is a habit that must formed, and it is formed more easily if we start them young. This poem is for a slightly older boy, but it is one that has a natural appeal. For one thing, it is in the form of poetry called a “ballad.” This is the most appealing poetic form for a person not inured to poetry.

Many of the old stories were rendered into ballads: the form lends itself to popularity. And this one is about cowboys, who have their own appeal:

Cowboy Song
by Charles Causley

I come from Salem County
Where the silver melons grow,
Where the wheat is sweet as an angel’s feet
And the zithering zephyrs blow
I walk the blue bone-orchard
In the apple-blossom snow,
Where the teasy bees take their honeyed ease
And the marmalade moon hangs low.

My maw sleeps prone on the prairie
In a boulder eiderdown,
Where the pickled stars in their little jam-jars
Hang in a hoop to town.
I haven’t seen paw since a Sunday
In eighteen seventy-three
When he packed his snap in a bitty mess-trap
And said he’d be home by tea.

Fled is my fancy sister
All weeping like the willow,
And dead is the brother I loved like no other
Who once did share my pillow.
I fly the florid water
Where run the seven geese round,
O the townsfolk talk to see me walk
Six inches off the ground

Across the map of midnight
I trawl the turning sky,
In my green glass the salt fleets pass
The moon her fire-floats by.
The girls go gay in the valley
When the boys come down from the farm,
Don’t run, my joy, from poor cowboy,
I won’t do you no harm.

The bread of my twentieth birthday
I buttered with the sun,
Though I sharpen my eyes with the lovers’ lies
I’ll never see twenty-one
Light is my shirt with lilies,
And lined with lead my hood,
On my face as I pass is a plate of brass
And my suit is made of wood.