SANDY CARPENTER
Oceanside, California
About Sandy Carpenter
Years Mount
Cowboy Roy leans on his ranch gate
Awaiting sunset’s smears
Time is a mountain, vast and vague,
Made up of yearning years
Roy’s reaching to heaven, roots in hell,
Shedding memory’s tears
Leaving their silt in ruts of life
Stuck in the troubled clay
One by one, by storms of God’s rule
They’re slowly washed away.
Years each in turn, at Roy’s bidding
Submit to Trooper’s neigh.
Yet silt and sands of time tremble
Don’t die in patterned plans
Only dry up like these ranch fields
Fade in dun-tint drought lands.
The flow of years has recompense,
Never heard reprimands
For all the years come back in rhyme
From miles of echoed space.
They spring up from slime of stream bed
From rock of creeks displaced
From dusty desert dunes blown in
And the trails Roy can’t retrace.
Till one by one recall returns
In time to tempered tread;
Slowly, surely but silently
Unknown, unseen, unsaid
To be reborn, renamed, released
Says Cowboy Roy’s bent head.
Time is a mountain, worked not won
Made up of yearning years.
© 2009, Sandy Carpenter
This poem may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.
Sandy comments: This poem came to me because of an old friend named Royale, who I call Roy, and he is the sweetest cowboy I've ever known, even though he doesn't ride much these days.
About Sandy Carpenter:
Sandy Carpenter was a Social Worker until retirement, then began writing poetry as well as a travel column in several California newspapers. She has published poetry in over a dozen literary journals, along with many in Southern California magazines and newspapers. Her 2001 novel, Casa Verde, is a romantic suspense tale set in the wild West at the Mexican border.
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