"how sweet it is to love someone...."

"How sweet it is
to love someone,
how right it is
to care...."
- John Denver

we live
near one another,

within a small circle
of midwestern
land between
two rivers...

far from the
place
we call
"home"

a high country
ranch
nestled
within the
bend of
another river
and
below five
fingers

but...

we never sit
face-to-face

only screen-to-screen

I remember
when your voice
rang through the aspens
and the lodgepole
pine
across a shimmering lake
and beyond a
chapel under the stars...

when I wondered
if you knew
we all thought you
could
"make it"
as a cowboy
poet...

you came and went in
our lives like
the seasons...

here,
and
there

and then,
here again...

a flash of mane and tail,
soft-spoken
and sun-burnished
whispering
"whoa"
in a voice
only heard by
her ears
bent to catch
your
words
before
galloping off
through
the sagebrush and
yarrow
while we watched
and
whooped
and
wondered how you
learned to
ride
"like that"

you
were
a boy,

a man,

and now,
a spectre online...

but always,
always...
always a friend

I remember
your voice,
with theirs...

an impromptu
reunion
concert

Valerie kitchen
filled with
old ranch hands
once-upon-a-time buckaroos,
rodeo queens,
and commancheros who
never forgot
a night in the forest with
a match, a blanket,
a horse
to call a friend...

"and trails to lead old
cowboys
home again..."

it's been too long
since we sang along with John, and
Dan, and JT...
aspens quivering in the
hush of twilight,
campfire crackling,
and
your guitar
leading us along a path
dusty with
fond memories and
horses nickering
in the
lower two-eighty...

we sang of
poems,
and prayers,
and promises, and
things that we
believed in...."

I still believe in them...

whither,
and the value of
friendship,
alone with your thoughts,

and you,

our cowboy poet
our friend...


"And Jonathan said to David,
Go in peace,
forasmuch as we have sworn
both of us
in the name of the Lord, saying,
"The Lord be between me and thee,..."
― I Samuel