a banquet of sage

The ice cream started going soft, but that wasn't so bad, thought Murphy. He didn't mind soft ice cream. The warming of the freezer did become intolerable when the ice cream turned to soup. Well the first morning after he discovered the soupy ice cream his coffee never tasted so rich and creamy, but the joy of that was short lived.

Littlegirlcop called the landlord, the landlord called the repair guy, the repair guy said it was hopeless and the landlord bought a new refrigerator. That all was simple enough.

What wasn't simple was removing hundreds or maybe even thousands of little magnetic words off his refrigerator. Over the years Murphy had bought multiple set of refrigerator poetry magnets. He had food words, and words of local interest, he had a set of big unpronounceable sixty four dollar words, he had some dirty words, some Italian words, and he also had cowboy words. The cowboy words were his favorite, and he was proud of the resulting cowboy poems.

All the unused words went into a big plastic bag and then Murphy carefully removed the finished poems from the refrigerator. He wrote out the poems on envelopes and placed the magnetic words inside, saving them for what he was never sure.

~-~-~

fear my ornery hitch
you rodeo cheatin' varmint
desert bones cry
raw critters bleed
can't saddle a scream

~-~-~

above a dream motel
sky manipulates range
the old cowpoke lights out
hankering a banquet of sage
brave woman beauty
and rumorous red treacle

~-~-~

that mad pickle dash
howling down a slick bridge
man did we tour heaven

~-~-~

feel'em buck
thunder round & bite
eat trail pardner

~-~-~

in rough weather &
hard mountains
our sourdough glow
ropes late summer romance
& prairie land sanctity