Riding Herd

Barbed wires on rusted nails can’t hold lone bulls at home when they smell pasture. They thrust their bone skulls under barbs, tongues quivering for a taste of strange and shove until the post gives way. Days later, we find wires sagging, reset the post, and tighten bent wires like a fiddle and rope the worn-out bull, wishing there was only a fence between us and our heart’s desire. But something with spurs and a rope would find us, cursing and yelling on horseback, cutting us from escape down arroyos, dragging us frothing and wild-eyed back to the sun-bleached yellow range, the same whirlpool of buzzards.