Lately, I’ve taken an interest in cowboy poetry, an art form harkening back to 19th-century cattle drives and extending into the 21st-century culture of cattle raising, especially on ranch lands in the American West. From long days in the saddle and lonely nights by the campfire, cowboys occupied their minds by creating poems. In the communal life of the cattle drive and the bunkhouse, they shared poems–those they wrote as well as those they learned from others. Like many other folk art forms, cowboy poetry is primarily oral and auditory, with some poems being disseminated widely through recitations before ever being written down. A lot has changed in the world of cattle raising, but cowboy poetry continues to thrive.
While my credentials are anything but solid, in my youth I did work on cattle ranches, although herding duties were more commonly accomplished in a pickup truck than on horseback. I built fences, hauled hay, mixed feed, and penned cattle for doctoring and such. Cowboying was not to be my life’s work, but it has always had a place in my heart, so perhaps I will not be judged a complete fraud if I build a loop for some western verse.
Garry Breland 