"It's a growing pain, like the sky watches me, as the water burdens my very life, a grotesque scene in a tranquil swamp, surrounded with all the flowers I only see as I lay there. It will be my forever lament, a maim into my soul, for the love that gets the best in me, it did the best of me, it is truly a crime."

Words told like a bestowed prayer, it vanishes through the wind as she lays there, submerged by the swamp.

Yesterday
while walking my dog
At the park
I saw a tall drink of water
A Winsome man who put us at ease
He’s saying his music to the air in trees
A genuine cowboy
From head to toe,

A cowboy hat, boots,Wrangler jeans
a rodeo belt buckle
Gave me a chuckle he sat
in a chair under a yonder, shade tree,
I saw him before he saw me

I mention if he sat there long enough,
He just might see
Eagles, hawks and a vultures or two
His slow reply
“ all I’ve seen so far
is a dog I once knew”

Lean back in his chair,
relaxing there contemplating
the morning view 7:42 am
By the time we finish our walk,
he was gone his melody, his song
still linger from the tips of his fingers

Today, sitting on a picnic table
The cowboy young and able
guitar in hand singing his music, he took a stand
(sundown by Gordon Lightfoot 1974)
“Strumming my face with his fingers
Singing in my whole life with this song”
like he was part of a country band

The minute we got out of the car he stopped,
Pulled his guitar down
I smiled when I spoke half in a joke
I had hoped  for a serenader or two
He looked up
Tipped his hat with a gleam in his eye
You were were you
as we walked by

Halfway down the trail,
I can hear him
strumming his guitar had much to say
Not singing just playing away

The soothing country, music,
gracefully in the air
birds, squirrels,  deer
Far and near
animals big and small everywhere paused
Ears went up twitching animals in awe
for a moment
to take in the one man band
As more people arrived for their daily walkabout

Simply honest, not to deceive
The cowboy quietly got up to leave
A Solitary man


Inspired song

1)Solitary man  (April 1966)
By Neil Diamond

2)Killing me softly 1973
By Roberta Flack

BLT Webster’s Word of the day challenge
Winsome  8-8-25
Windsome describes people and things that are cheerful, pleasant, and appealing

"It's quite a pretty hell,
quite a pretty hell,"

said the wilting woman
to her plastic window self,

a half-tint fetch, etched
in the eye of the weevil

threading the black dough
of the crosstown bus route.

The nightclubbers behind her
exchange glances and hold hands

as she begins to hum to herself,
but the unvarnished melody

lodges in an angle of odd brain
& soon I'm humming it too

as I step into 18th Street's maw,
already bristling neon sweet

with milkmaid dress hems
threshing ruptured doorsteps -

turning up my street I catch
a last sight of the shushed bus husk

crawling away northwards
with only a scratching hum inside

for its heartbeat, and a face lost
in the catacomb of its reflection.

pardon me please
but have you seen
the mess over there
here and in-between
we seldom toss
the losses we keep
it's all just a part of the plan

we'll tear it all down
before it's brought up
when it comes back around
will there be enough
more lost than found
well, ain't that just our luck
it's all just a part of the plan

the plan of man
to do us all in
by any means
anyway, that he can
he doesn't think deep
or that far ahead
all this, more or less
the plan of man

who doesn't take credit
when it's all going well
or wash our hands of it
when it's going to hell
the survival of the fittest
or at least of oneself
it's all just a part of the plan

it's easy to lie
when you try and save face
doubly hard to deny
with the faces we make
so why do we try
to get away
it's all just a part of the plan