Poem about my youthful dance with the death angel...composed on October 23, 2006

Tracks of a friend in the snow

I have lain on the path of bone chilling fear ... watched as the death angel hovered near ... Midnight I rode the trail where black lion stalked ... my steed snorting his course stayed.. balked ... I lost my seat and the moon swirled around ... my head was the first to kiss frozen ground ... My body bounced down the Arbuckles crag ... the earth drank my blood and there I laid ... and dreamed the dream of death’s opening door ... of life unlived and path’s untracked with joy untasted ... my future my claim on living gone as I lay wasted ... but awareness came as light chased away the night ... My companion grazed close by had kept the cat away ... snow tracks around my death bed testified to his stay ... my shirt red soaked with life’s precious fluid staining the ground ... I drug my pain racked body to the saddle and started down ... past the still waiting mountain lion eyes peering from thick weeds ... the smell of my blood kept him waiting to quench his savage needs ... I looked back as he smelled my blood spilled in the snow where I lay ... then followed us for awhile before turning to find unguarded prey ... Danpatch went to equine heaven during the next season’s winter strife ... But in my dreams I still count the tracks of my friend who saved my life.


. . jdm10/23/2006 based on a true occurrence with some literary license applied...My dad was a cowboy and Danpatch had been his favorite horse until he was retired to be my horse. At the time of the poem Danpatch was over twenty years old and I was 12. Gosh I miss him!