Cowboy Song

[marnanel]

cw death, ghosts

COWBOY SONG
by Charles Causley

I come from Salem County
Where the silver melons grow,
Where the wheat is sweet as an angel's feet
And the zithering zephyrs blow.
I walk the blue bone-orchard
In the apple-blossom snow,
When the teasy bees take their honeyed ease,
And the marmalade moon hangs low.

My Maw sleeps prone on the prairie
In a boulder eiderdown,
Where the pickled stars in their little jam-jars
Hang in a hoop to town.
I haven't seen Paw since a Sunday
In eighteen seventy-three,
When he packed his snap in a bitty mess-trap
And said he'd be home by tea.

Fled is my fancy sister
All weeping like the willow,
And dead is the brother I loved like no other
Who once did share my pillow.
I fly the florid water
Where run the seven geese round;
Oh, the townsfolk talk to see me walk
Six inches off the ground.

Across the map of midnight
I trawl the turning sky,
In my green glass the salt fleets pass
The moon her fire-float by.
The girls go gay in the valley
When the boys come down from the farm,
Don't run, my joy, from a poor cowboy,
I won't do you no harm.

The bread of my twentieth birthday
I buttered with the sun,
Though I sharpen my eyes with lovers' lies
I'll never see twenty-one.
Light is my shirt with lilies,
And lined with lead is my hood,
On my face as I pass is a plate of brass,
And my suit is made of wood.