The Bosque Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The Bosque is beautiful in thunder and fire.
As thieves wind their spools of copper wires.
Young lovers are pooling in the dry brushes,
And long legged jackrabbits go thumping through washes.

The Bosque is beautiful in thunder and fire.
As the arsonist cuts through the chicken wire.
The leathery sheriffs wearing boots up to their knees,
With heavy flashlights search through juniper, picking off flees.

The Bosque is beautiful in thunder and fire,
As the fireworks sound their charges through the mountains’ cragged ire.
But the llano is open and green,
And in the monsoon’s lamentations it paints a long sheen.

Down through the cracked gullies, slipping from the desolate highways,
Thatched in a thicket humming of enchanting vermilion poisons.
Having leapt the concrete drainage, the young farmer on his faint donkey,
There stitched across the brambling trestles faded in long seasons.

There is the Bosque beautiful in thunder and fire,
Where young lovers pool in innocent desire,
But the llano is open and green,
And in the monsoon’s lamentations it paints a long sheen.