leaving his lady for the night

asleep inside.

Garrett calling his name just before he pulled the trigger–

“Billy”–

calling him softly.

In the book Garrett wrote about it

he claimed Billy’s last words were “¿Quien es”

(“Who is it?”)

though he privately told his drinking buddies

the real last words of Billy the Kid

were “Ah, shit!”

but the Sheriff hadn’t wanted to offend

genteel readers.

“Billy.”

Called his name softly out of the darkness

then blew him away.

The knife clattering on the porch.

The heavy, glazed mass of the deer meat

swaying in the cool night air.

The woman inside beginning to scream.

The Moving Part of Motion

The last of the high plains drifters

canters his palomino through the Montana grain fields,

shockwave ripples undulating in his trampled wake.

The sun burns like magnesium;

the moon like a knot of pitch.

Every movement in the motion he makes

hurts his fractured cheekbone

and the broken hand he holds against his chest.

Pistol-whipped and stomped by the

psycho Sheriff of Cheyenne

and his Deputies of Derangement,

the drifter, in a thoughtful mood, drifts west-northwest,

where he loosely reckons Missoula is,

thinking it may be time to settle down and marry,

maybe have some kids.

But for now he’s simply glad

he made it out of Wyoming alive,

and that his destination is stationary.

How About

FOR JASON STOCKLEY DODGE

All day, relentless,

Jason, just turned six,

captures me in play:

How about if I’m Jean-Luc Picard

Commander of the starship Enterprise

and you’re Q,

that mischievous guy who knows everything

and just sort of popped out of a black hole;

and a bunch of Cardassians and maybe some

space monsters

have locked on to us with a tractor-beam

and are pulling us into a gamma transducer

that’s robbing our power–

oh no, our shields are down to 60%!–

and let me tell you

our butts are in trouble,

so how about this time–just once–

can we set our phasers on KILL?

Or how about

I’m Rin-Tin-Tin

and I’m running through the woods

and how about

you’re a bad guy,

a real mean criminal,

and you go hide behind that fir tree

and you shoot Rinty when he runs by

and Rinty rolls and rolls down this hill like

he’s dead,

and just lies there,

very, very, very still,

but the thing is

you missed,

Rinty is faking, he fooled you,

and when you walk over

Rinty attacks Rar-rar-rarrrrrr!

and you try to shoot him

but Rinty crunches your arm

so you shoot yourself instead and stagger around

until you just fall over deader than a doorknob.

How about that?

Or how about

you’re just walking along dah-de-dah

and you see these two little dinosaurs

caught in this basketball net

so you call 911–

and I am Rescue 911–

and I send a fire truck with a ladder and Fireman

Bob driving with his dog Chief on the back,