My friends—Tony mounted on Melonhead a sure-footed red mule and Randy on his spirited Arabian—scout a passage across ancient Llano Estacado dunes. Some remain subject to the whims of winds, while others are stable thanks to short-grass prairie cover peppered with sage and shin oak. Local ranchers and farmers call these sprawling borderlands between Portales NM and Muleshoe TX the Sand Hills. A stanza from one of my early poems recalls this day...
Smell the sage, roust antelope and deer;
Ride fence down draw and over sand hill;
Round up heifers and chase ornery steer
And get ‘em to water ‘neath lone windmill.
After a raw April day of chasing cattle—including longhorns—in a Spring roundup, we're eager to reach home hearth fires before a threatening Norther plunges temperatures and whips up bone-chilling rain squalls.
© Ilija Lukić 2024
No comments:
Post a Comment