Sandy's Ranch

I withered lasso hangs from a saddle
inside an empty stall of an old barn.
It holds nothing but groans of times past.
Matted straw, rusty scythes long stacked
against the wall. Sandy makes his way
slowly through the empty pen that once held
proud studs and stealthy mares. Age
has bent him into an old man who speaks
of days when he raced the wind
across the expansive prairie's
and of long cattle drives that led him
deep into labyrinths of canyon walls.
We make our way to the corral
cedar post lean, giving in
to twists and turns of the ground beneath.
His steel blue eyes linger across the fields
once full of colts grazing on rich grass
and playing by the glacier fed stream.
The years have rolled fast upon him.
He knows he is soon to become a memory
to be buried deep in the valley grass.