tender brown

pants, according to the field 

museum, were invented for horses 

-not actual horses, mind you, 

but their Iranian riders who were invented 

for herding tender cuts of meat

into the gustatory ranch

of a rich man’s mouth,

a tender pocket which was invented 

for appreciating the finer things 

in life.  Someone must do all this

savoring, he thought, lost on cowmen

and horseboys who do not mind cheap 

cigarettes or fumes of tender brown

droppings which God invented 

for the flies to savor 

bask and play in their wavy 

plumes of heat.

The interaction between Evolution/Creation/Invention interest me (biological, sociological, fashionical, etc.): what was made for what?  In a million symbiotic pleasures and relationships, which came first?  For many different things, we will probably never know, but we can choose to have both the mindless enjoyment of a fly and the gratefulness of a human, which is nice.  Appreciation can take different forms.  Wine aged to perfection for 100 years would taste one way to a man dying of thirst and another way to a wine connoisseur.  I think both are important.  

This poem is for Tim’s aunt, who spent a year living on a ranch writing cowboy poetry.  I have no idea what cowboy poetry is, but I hope my life is heading in that direction, so I decided to give it a shot.  “Write about what you know” is one fundamental rule of writing.  “Write about what you have no clue about” should be another.