Trail Boss

 

At first I didn’t want to go. I tried

to explain — adventure isn’t my thing.

I’d heard about the perils — people died

doing this, killed by snake bites and bee stings,

bad water, bad food all along the way,

bad hombres around every bend. And nobody

ever comes back. You couldn’t pay

me, I started to say . . . but in the glow

of the candlelight, the glow of the wine,

they worked on me. We need you, they insisted.

No one else can do this, can’t you find

it in yourself to —

                               But I wouldn’t listen —

not till they tempted me with that title.

I began to reassess the crossing,

with myself as prairie potentate.

Oh, they had me with those words — trail boss.

 

 

© Michael Fleming

Brattleboro, Vermont

February 2020

 

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