Trotting Along The Roads Of Texas Poem by Troy Cochran

These feet have known some miles
that would stagger other men.
I do my best to keep up,
but they are wild horses
thinking there's a barn around the bend
or a herd of pretty mares just
standing around, looking over the horizon
for two handsome studs.

I'm constantly reminding them to just
slow way down, there is no place we haven't been.
It's all I can do to keep them contained
in boots designed for walking,
making poems in my head
while they are talking.
They mean to ditch me on the side of the road,
me and my load, but I am on to them.

One by one, a train of other men
are passing by in pickup trucks and porches,
some of them with quizzical faces, some
on the verge of smirking, others outright laughing,
knowing a fool just by the passing;
but me and my two horses
have the best of them: we have the open road
and all the plains of Texas; and further on,
a little tent beside a creek
to compliment the Rocky Mountains.
And while I'm paying my respects to God
yahooing with the wind and white-water rafting through
the central nervous system of a canyon,
they will be paying their respects
by installments on their taxes.

The smile in me is so big
I'm erupting; I'm a walking light bulb
running on its own electricity.
No one yet has found a way to flip me off
that works for them. I shine on,
and no one has to understand me
or my eccentricity. I only envy other men
for their money, sex, and air conditioning;
otherwise, I'm good. I have discovered
the nonchalance of my own divine
and earthy masculinity. I am well
under-stood
by my two horses: I call the one Mercedez
and the other Benz; but I think
they'd rather I called them
Thunder and Lightning.

To be sure, it's a chore
the keeping up with them,
but there it is. A two-horsepower mode
of transportation.

My life comes down to very simple choices:
to be or not to be
in this moment alive and boisterous,
trotting along the roads of Texas
just to plant a smile in the foreign soils
of my Facebook friends
and anyone else who may be from a distance

watching.