Tue, 19 Oct 2010

In reply to a reader's letter, the editor of American Cowboy says that they plan to bring back the Cowboy Poetry section of the magazine. That's a good thing. So, I hope that this blog will help me to submit an entry.

A little introduction is needed. At the time that the poem was written, I was working as a wrangler on a trail-riding ranch. We had a herd of 24 horses. The ranch only had two full-time employees: the ranch manager and me. My boss was a young man by the name of Greg Sterling -- a true horse genius, who was also an accomplished singer and performer. (I have an autographed CD from him.)

A lot of people in the Nashville area wear varying degrees of Western clothing. Sadly, only a minority have any real clue about "the cowboy way". After a 12 to 14 hour day of various duties (including chasing loose horses on foot), I would sometimes stop at a grocery store or a restaurant on the way home. People would see my garb and ask if I were a singer. My reply: "Nope. I actually know which end of the rope the animal goes on."

That sometimes led to discussions that started with some version of the question: "You actually do that for a living?!" Similarly, trail riders -- from all over the United States, and from several foreign countries -- would ask me "why" I would do a job that involved long periods in the saddle, stepping in horse poop, and rubbing up against sweat-soaked animals that can weigh up to half a ton. Those asking the question were even more amazed when I told them that my last job before the ranch was working as a paralegal on the 23rd floor of a downtown Nashville office building. This Q&A sequence became so common that I decided to put the answer into poetry form.

By the way, for the record, I have found "office politics" to be a much greater job hazard then horse kicks. I've only been kicked twice, stepped on twice, and dragged once -- in four decades of horseback riding. I'm the only person that I know that has broken up a three-way horse fight without getting kicked. By comparison, when I worked in that law office, there was a skinny little gal, fresh out of law school, that used to come in almost every day and ask, "Does this outfit make me look fat?" There was no right answer to the question. (One would think that a simple "no" would suffice, but ... no.) I'd much rather face another horse fight than to work with someone like her again. (So, even without any description, she factors greatly into the poem.)

You can find this poem in the back of my first book, Slingshot, which was released in December of 2006. (Please visit my Web site at: www.TomKovach.US.)

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Why I wrangle
by: Tom Kovach

Some people actually ask why
I do a job where I might die
from gettin’ kicked or dragged.
They just don’t seem to understand
this kind of work, or this kind of man —
who’d die from gettin’ nagged.

It might surprise a few to learn
that there’s more to life than cash to earn,
and more to a life’s work than just ... the work.

And it might also surprise them
to read my “ray-zew-may”,
and learn that I’ve done many jobs that earned a lot more pay.

But those jobs were all just ... jobs —
while wranglin' is a life.
It really is a calling —
it’s almost like a wife.

The office politics out here
takes place in the corral,
Where snorts and bites and kicks and charges
replace the rumor mill.

The whirring of the copier,
and the pounding of the keys,
has been replaced by hoofbeats
and the wind among the trees.

I didn’t need to fill out any fancy application form.
All I did was demonstrate
that honor was my norm.
We wranglers care for the horses that God put here to ride.
Their lives depend on us, and we take the pain in stride —
because the thunder of their hooves
will fill our hearts with pride.

So, when some slicker asks me,
“You do what kind of work?!”
I just let the question dangle,
because some folks will never understand
why I chose to wrangle.