Suburban Cowgirls: Two Poems of a Lost World
Lots of suburban kids in the 1950s knew of the Pony Man, a photographer that snapped a picture that would feed dreams of horses and the open range.
photo by the Pony Man who came to my neighborhood.
Pony Man
The melancholy pony sauntered by his side
Both sweltering in the August heat
A huge tripod weighed upon his shoulder
As the children dropped their toys and ran.
How could they resist the Pony Man?
Lining up in the shade of an elm
They waited as one kid donned the vest
The chaps and hat and climbed aboard
The tiny saddle on the dosing beast.
The finished photo would be the best thing
Stored in their mother's scrapbook
Handed down and cherished for decades
Every child owned one as proof
They were cowboys in a bygone age.
They could almost smell the purple sage.
Buried Trail
Bored with summer vacation
I look out the window to see
two horses tied to the tree just beyond the door
my sister and Louise stomp their dusty boots
guzzle glasses of water and ask me to ride
with them all the way back to the barn.
In moments, I’m mounted in front of Louise
sighting our suburban route through pointed ears
we cross Highway 40 toward the golf course
through a neighborhood where a girl my age
astride a plastic stick horse and dressed
in matching vest and boots
stares at me in awe as we pass.
We skirt the hillside along a paved road
past quaint Tudors with manicured lawns
and Frank Lloyd Wrights hanging over the ravine
soon a rutted road leads us
through willow and scrub oak, the hot sun pulling
aromas from the brush
following our ascent toward the barn
a place beyond my reach
now coming closer with every hoof beat.
Louise gives me the reins
and the horse turns sideward
my sister laughs, wrinkles her nose
why’d you lead your horse into the trees, silly?
I wonder where she’d learned to ride
how she’d finally decided to let me
taste the joy of her world
when most of our time together
was spent in fights and rancur.
I try to find this trail decades later
it’s fenced or buried under freeways
the barn and corrals have disappeared
we’ve lost track of Louise
my sister and I no longer speak
that one brilliant day of days
has become a mirage that shimmers
above willow and sage.
The older I get, the more I realize that family is everything. I have a family of only seven adults and each one precious in her or his way. I loved the ride you took me on here, Sue, under the hot hot sun, immersed in the smells of the grasses.. The last four lines broke my heart. Beautiful.