The Real Wild West

The Real Wild West

Sun spilled over the continental divide

         on a 1996 September Sunday afternoon,

The wine Subaru cruised curves on this new

                      topography of barren hills

An alien ventured into the northwest corner

                      of a rigidly right-wing state

Of mind

Blindly tempting the boundaries of will

                          and faith and ministry

Greeted by blowing tumbleweed on parched

                         empty streets of a movie façade

For the Butch Cassidy western foretelling the

                        Smith-and-Wesson insurance

Of all the straight-pipe half-tons seemingly

                          blown like vagrant weeds

through the straw-dry dreams of coal-miner

                         imaginations behind a mascara of

black soot, defiant fears, teen wives and mothers

                          and children who are forced

witnesses to their father’s shooting sparrows

                              from clothesline wires

Just to prove their power over all, disdainful

                           of the impact on their innocence

Small-town bigotry targeted “city-slick”, educated

                         ‘sophistication’ of tree-hugging

Environmental sensibility, gun-reform advocacy

                                         and all faith practice

Sustaining racial, gender and ethnic tolerance….

Into this cauldron the man with an alb, a bible,

                                  a chasuble and prayerbook

Reminded observers of a new fawn trying to find

                                       food on a desert mesa

Misfit, alien, dangerous and suspect…..the white-tail

                                        gasped for air and water

In vain…

And lay lifeless forever....

With an 81-13 plurality in favour of trump fascism

                        the county has finally found its

Messiah…………………..while losing all hope!