Another Path To Sundown

Another path to sundown,
the cowboy reins his mount
and, from his shirt, takes out to read
his Mother’s grim account.

With worried mind he sits astride
his one and only friend,
then lets her pick her to find
a shelter from the wind.

Down among the trees there is
a camp they’ve used before,
an Aspen meadow memory
along the river shore.

He stakes the horse and settles in
to contemplate the sight,
the ever changing splendor of
a Rocky Mountain night.

In sweet familiar solitude,
he ponders by and by,
in council with the summer breeze
the mountains and the sky.

He drifts upstream in memory
to where he’s been of late,
then down the stream of time he rides
to contemplate his fate.

Tomorrow's track may bring him to
a rapid or a fall.
He wonders, should he chase his dreams,
or heed his mother's call?.

Against the sky stand ancient peaks

in ghostly silhouette,
the massive guards of nature's realm,
eternal, posted yet...

to host the seeds of what's to come,
the redirect the wind,
to shunt the raging river flow,
and force the stream to bend.

In nature's own cathedral,
underneath the Milky Way
he makes a choice to ride for home
before the break of day.

Another path to sundown, to
the peace for which he's yearned,
he's found his way but isn't yet...
the prodigal returned.



~Dean Neighbors~

08 June, 2021
Denver, Colorado

love this "throwaway" verse...but not sure how it fits in the poem.

Another path to sundown,

though prudence can advise,

the Oracle who rules the soul

can see with God's own eyes.

.