What is the value of a life
Of a husband or a wife 
Of a daughter or a son.

Do these labels give value to one,
More so over the other?

Is a wife less valuable than a mother,
A father more valuable than a son?

Does value rise or fall
as one becomes another?

Surely every life can't be worth the same!
Can it?

 I wonder.
Is a peasants life,
of less value than a kings!

Or does Status, Creed, Race, or Color,
truly, not mean a **** thing?

It is true that I would place my
wife, my son, and my brothers
life over that of another.

But that value is given to them only by me.
No life is worth more
than any other in reality.

Yet until we can open
our hearts and minds to see.

The true value of life will never be!

The only child
but favorite
of two ‘outlaws’
mare and stud

He bucked each
gelded moment
on their wild ride
of love

Until that day
he up and left
their branding iron
of pain

To wander high
and lonesome
mongst the free  
and tumbling sage

In search of one
last bronc to mount
that one last
horn to make

And spur the wreckage
of his youth
as Angels
— pull the Gate


(Pendleton Round-Up: June, 1993
Elko Nevada: Cowboy Poetry Reading: January, 1994)