An Easterner Looks West

 

Neil Harding McAlister

 

 

The West is more than just a place.         

It was a time, a frame of mind            

In black and white; a state of grace

Where good and bad were well defined --

 

The spunky gals, the stalwart sons,

The Westerns on the silver screen,

The psychopaths who toted guns --

All icons of what once had been.

 

Vague legends of some bad guy’s crimes

Become an epic, moral tale                           

Of conflict back in simpler times,

Compared to which our lives look pale.

 

This theatre of the Old West

Speaks of a mythic day gone by

When heroes faced life’s toughest test

With steady nerve and steely eye.

 

The wild, wild West was soon constrained

By fences, laws and railroad lines

‘Til little of that world remained --                

But for the past, the heart still pines.

 

In city canyons made of steel,

Our complex days are rushed and stressed.

We yearn for things more plain and real,

And dream of vistas ‘way out west                            

 

Where spires of red rock touch the sky,

Instead of towers of sterile glass;

Where open range beguiles the eye,

Not urban wastes where taxis pass.

 

And so we don blue jeans and boots,             

And with our little ones in tow

Vamoose by lesser-traveled routes

To see some county rodeo.

 

And no one even thinks it’s strange

To emulate as best we can

The cowpokes who still work the range,

As if the clothes could make the man.

 

It seems we need our cowboy tales;   

So we their image still embrace,

While speeding down our asphalt trails.

The West is more than just a place. 

 

 

  

 

 

      

 

© 2004, Neil Harding McAlister

Monument Valley, Utah

 

  

Thanks to Bucky and the gang at Cowboypoetry.com for including this poem in their extensive on-line collection of Cowboy Poetry.