We don't need to read fiction to find interesting characters when so many walk among us in real life. Here is a poem I wrote over the course of a few days when I recalled a memory of him.
Bill's Weathered Stirrups
hung on the wall of the shed,
collectibles to cross
the auction block and pass
to new possession.
After life mostly crawled by
and Bill rode horses
only in his mind,
he gave them to Dad
who taped Bill's name on their edge
to save their history.
I often pondered that pair
of bent wood toe holds
Bill used to keep his seat
in the middle of a horse
when he rode
through tan sand hills
and around blue water sloughs.
I first saw him ride in the 50's,
some event Frieda dreamt up
at the Bohnsack ranch,
with his boots planted in those stirrups.
Oh, my, he stood so tall
in the saddle
with his hawk nose
reaching beyond the filmy glass orb
he wore for an eye.
The master of his own perspective,
he lived in a kind of splendid anonymity.
Few sought him out,
an exception being the evil game warden
who targeted Bill's fish traps in the Sheyenne
and his clandestine deer shining.
Bill always prevailed,
at least in legend.
Pursued at night,
wily Bill
took his poached deer
to bed under covers
to foil the probing eyes
of the warden
who so wanted to catch
him with his prey.
Wise in elemental ways,
he could witch a well,
drive a sand point,
or dehorn your cows,
but I often thought
his doing laundry
meant getting caught
in a rain shower.
Celebrated by the poet McGrath
who named him Bill Dee,
he will live on in that mythical sort
of immortality.
He still rides high in my memory,
sometimes in one of those Model A Fords
he kept coaxing into town
or on that horse
where he rooted his boots into those
weathered stirrups.
