Charles Badger Clark Poems

There was a sunny, savage land
Beneath the eagle's wings,
And there, across the thorns and sand,
Wild rovers rode as kings.
...

My fathers sleep on the sunrise plains,
And each one sleeps alone.
Their trails may dim to the grass and rains,
For I choose to make my own.
...

'Twas a hold called Red's Saloon
In La Vaca Town;
'Twas an old piano there,
Blistered, marred and brown,
...

Cut loose a hundred rivers,
Roaring across my trail,
Swift as the lightning quivers,
Loud as a mountain gale.
...

Our lives are hid; our trails are strange;
We're scattered through the West
In canyon cool, on blistered range
Or windy mountain crest.
...

I went and worked in a drippin' mine
'Mong the rock and the oozin' wood,
For the dark it seemed lit with a dollar sign
And they told me money's good.
...

When my rope takes hold on a two-year-old,
By the foot or the neck or the horn,
He kin plunge and fight till his eyes go white
But I'll throw him as sure as you're born.
...

(High-Chin Bo
'Way high up the Mogollons,
Among the mountain tops,
A lion cleaned a yearlin's bones
...

I ride alone and hate the boys I meet.
Today, some way, their laughin' hurts me so.
I hate the mockin'-birds in the mesquite-
And yet I liked 'em just a week ago.
...

Jeff Hart rode out of the gulch to war
When the low sun yellowed the pines.
He waved to his folks in the cabin door
...