Riding stolen horses

The guy living large with the hat,
dressed to the nines in black,
with eyes sweeping a broad dry valley to the cows,
who seeks his eyes, then humbly brings a store-bought
present to the woman tall in leggings with
long hair free, like an ancient story ***** alive.
He is frozen in communal memory,

this single cowboy guiding his returned
stolen horses at dusty noon all rock and dust,
the hooves as staccato rhythm for manly wild eyes
stating be here now as permanent fever
moves toward the rushing transparent river.
Forever the big sky breeze caresses his stoic
face schooled in fragile civilization,

knowing soon in the script he lives he will
push outward swinging saloon doors
to face another lawless soul, another wood built
village/far trail—prepared, as if venerated
teachers in his few years of school saw him
stripped of words pounding in a gallop,
protected by the silver belt buckle

and tall boots scuffed and pointed, the shaped
hat shielding eyes from the bright—
as a copied tintype—the crooked squint and smile
slowly emerging untamed.  Deliberate, the hand
moves in habit to the gun in a muted painful sepia
myth robbed of mom and dad progression.
His stripped history has been released

into wild context—mixed with spaceship/
instant access—on the cartoonish
thin fringes with 50s big hair, as a brave bluff
facing forgotten consequences.  Nonetheless,
he struggles from the bestiary of faceless others,
grizzled and contained and handsome, to
head on out, away, alone as always.