The hurdy gurdy girls dance all night upstairs,
Working the gamblers and the cowboys,
With their fine ribboned dresses and warm easy smiles,
They separate the men from their money,
All the money, that is, not already well lost
On whiskey and rot gut and faro.

Wyatt made a good living in saloons and dancehalls,
Hickok's end came suddenly playing poker,
The Kid and the girls were quite fond of each other,
And he died at home in the arms of a lover,
Cut down by his best friend's revolver.

When canines chose humans
To be their friends,
They helped us move farther
From our cousins the chimps,
Forming with us
An extended hunting band
And securing the borders
Of our nightly camps;
We grew together,
Tooth and hand,
Partners for as long as
Our pack and family exists.

As my body erodes cliff by cliff
Beneath the deluge of my days;
The first to go was the summer house
Where I freely ran and played
Under the blaze of childhood innocence
And the rushing hormones of my youth.

I am not young, I freely admit,
But nowhere close to surrender:
My step is firm, my vision clear,
And should the fires of autumn threaten,
Waves of helicopters I shall send
To douse their rage to ember.

I spring from Sicilian and American Farmers
Who lived by their wits when their hands proved not enough;
We've owned land, lost it, owned it again,
We've been teachers, stone masons, mothers and soldiers,
Ranchers, laborers, preachers and railmen;
Most of us have earned an honest living,
Some of us have been border line,
A few might even have run with the Family
But their names remain buried with the fishes
And I do not discuss them with police or strangers;
Mama didn't raise no fools.

In and out of public life,
Women disappear to have their babies
While the men pretend they are involved,
Playing through their carefully trimed golf courses,
Their fast food bar snacks, and their cocktail waitress.

We all are a product of time and evolution,
The current culmination of choice and chance
That continues today throughout Homo Sapiens,
But the male of the species seems unnecessarily susceptible
To our baser urges and primal instincts.

If I were a betting woman - and who is not? -
I would think the problem a matter of hormones
And the adolescent behavior that society allows,
If not condones, in men who are supposedly grown
And fully functioning otherwise responsible adults .

Men act they way they do because they know they can,
Because women will let them and some will participate
As eager targets for male behavior and aggression;
Boys will always be boys if society provides them the opportunity
And women choose to be their playthings in Never Never Land.

Cleopatra died a relative failure,
As we all should finally at the end,
Her ambition outstretching her clever mastery,
Her grasp well worth chancing with her life.

Those among us who would never overreach,
Who would live their lives locked in desperate certitude,
Die decades before their flesh and body is taken,
A spiritless inanimation decades past expiration.

As death approaches, five
Or six decades down the continuum,
I find myself writing more furiously,
Searching for the right mortar
To cement my fleeting immortality;
Two or three millennia from now,
If only a verse or two of mine remain,
I will be as ancient as the tenth muse
And successful in the only way
That truly ever matters.

Once I wore garlands,
As a moon rose above the horizon,
And danced along the shoreline
While the waves washed the sands
From beneath my feet.

You watched
From the safety of your rocks
Until the high tide found me
Well beyond its moist grasp
As I lay alone upon the beach.

Let us go then, I, me, and mine,
Down to the river where the wild thyme lies:
We can try out our powerboat
And leave the current in our wake;
Picnic on the waters edge
Beneath the shade of an ancient oak
And watch the world drift away down river,
Two by two on their wooden rafts
While we eat our brie with sourdough
And sip warm sangiovese from plastic cups.

Put another log on the fire, Mama,
Put another log on for me,
And have the Border up on the bed
To warm the blankets and the sheets.

Snow tomorrow, cold tonight,
The morning chills me to the bone,
Heat up the hot chocolate, check your thermostat
There's a hard wind rising this morning.