Cowboy Eternal

Ron Koppelberger

Cowboy Eternal

Vast shimmering clouds of mist, thick in sheets and moist blankets of slowly moving shadow, chased and flirted with the edge of the frayed desert horizon. Bully Scrap moved closer to his fate, the reward, or perhaps the punishment that lost cowboys and desert wolves, coyotes and saddle sore survivors were destined to endure, forever, lasting as long as a snakes unwearied name; thus the temptation to unknown pass, to vistas of discovery, dreams and wonted adventure.
The horse moved in slow steady rhythm and Bully coaxed the wind, parables and the promise of mysterious deliriums. Bully borrowed the courage of sagebrush riders and stallions in abeyant purpose as he entered the mist, the eye of the tempest and the point of no return.
The flow of warm summer rain fell on Bully’s shoulders and the mist abated to reveal sunshine and sporadic rain, the sweet season, the blossoms of a lush sylvan wild and a riddle borne by the sky and the clear lines of youth.
Bully cried and prayed, thankful, accepting the newness of his soul and the fresh breath of an unraveled whisper. To be reborn in castes of sunglow dew, by the distance between here and the past. Bully looked toward the orange fire of a nascent sun and an azure heaven. Cowboys commune he thought, cowboys commune. Gently he spoke, “ I have a wish to labor, onto the light evanescence of the river, thereby I live, thereby I live for the next horizon.”