High Horse

Cody entered the bar as he had so many, many times before.
It was always the same, and yet, it had its seasons.
Someone was playing ‘Amarillo by Morning’ on their Spotify.
Better than those old guys and their Rolling Stones or,
Worse, that shit the college girls pick up off TikTok.

-Hey Cody, how’s it going?
-Not bad, Derry. I’ll have a PBR and a Wyo Whiskey.
-Celebrating, are you?
-Not really. The PBR is kind of an inside joke.
-You going back to Vegas?
-Yup, this weekend. I like your new tattoo.
-Thanks, I’m working on the left arm now.

Cody wondered how old George was when he wrote that song,
Which you could say did not speak to him so much as describe him:
His fool’s errands, like the trip to Vegas.
Fucking AI is useless—I’ll just say 37.
That’s a good age, a prime number, a time when a man
Turns a bend in the road and can see a good ways ahead.

Cody used to consume Derry with his eyes,
To observe each new tattoo and the way it enveloped her form.
He told himself it was just background noise—
Like the sound of your truck’s engine on the highway.
Unless there’s something odd, you ignored it.
Then Derry got married and that was that.

Once she gave him a tiny painting she had made—
The size of of a stamp, no more.
A raven in a tree—some kind of talisman for her.
He got one of those wax paper envelopes,
The kind collectors use, to keep it in.
To this day he will pull it out
As he rests on the back of the beast,
Both creatures breathing hard and heavy.

Michael Harkin is a long-time resident of Wyoming and emeritus professor of anthropology at The University of Wyoming. He is a three-time National Endowment for the Humanities awardee and recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the Wyoming Arts Council. He has taught or held fellowships in Austria, Romania, France, New Zealand, and China. He is interested in applying the ethnographic perspective to poetry and fiction, as well as to scholarly writing.