Baxter Black, large animal veterinarian, America’s cowboy poet, high school and college bull rider,
was a favorite poet of mine. Reading his poetry entertains, educates and always provides a unique
perspective on not just cowboying but life itself. RANGE FIRE IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE
POEMS.
Range Fire
Lightening cracked across the sky like veins on the back of your hand
It reached a fiery finger out as if in reprimand
And torched a crippled cottonwood that leaned against the sky
While grass and sagebrush hunkered down that hellish hot July.
The cottonwood exploded! And shot its flaming seeds
Like comets into kerosene, igniting all the weeds.
The air was thick as dog’s breath when the fire’s feet hit the ground.
It licked its pyrogenic lips and then it looked around.
The prairie lay defenseless in the pathway of the beast,
It seemed to search the further hills and pointed to the east,
Then charged! Like some blind arsonist, some heathen hell on wheels
With its felonious companion, the wind hot on his heels.
The varmints ran like lemmings in the shadow of the flame
While above a red-tailed hawk flew circles, taking aim.
He spied a frazzled prairie dog and banked into a dive
But the stoker saw him comin’ and fried ‘em both alive!
It slid across the surface like a molten oil slick.
It ran down prey and predator, the quick and the quick.
The killdear couldn’t trick it, it was cinders in a flash.
The bones of all who faced it soon lay smoking in the ash.
The antelope and the cricket, the rattlesnake and the bee,
The butterfly and the badger, the coyote and the flea.
It was faster than the rabbit, faster than the fawn,
They danced inside the dragon’s mouth like puppets. . . then
were gone.
It offered up no quarter and burned for seven days.
A hundred thousand acres were consumer within the blaze.
Brave men came out to kill it, cutting trail after trail
But it jumped their punny firebreaks and scattered ‘em like quail.
It was ugly from a distance and uglier up close
So when the men who saw the greasy belly of the ghost
It made’m cry for mama. Blistered paint of D-8 Cats.
It sucked the sweat right off their backs and broke their thermostats.
It was hotter than a burning brake, heavy as a train,
It was louder than the nightmare screams of Abel’s brother, Cain.
It was war with nature’s fury unleashed upon the land
Uncontrollable, enormous, it held the upper hand.
The men retrenched repeatedly, continuously bested
Then finally on the seventh day, like Genesis, it rested.
The black-faced firefighters, stared, unable to believe.
They watched the little wisps of smoke, mistrusting their reprieve.
They knew they hadn’t beaten it. They knew beyond a doubt.
Though News Break told it different, they knew it just went out.
Must’ve tired of devastation, grew jaded to the flame,
Simply bored to death of holocaust and walked out of the game.
You can tell yourself, that’s crazy. Fire’s not a living thing.
It’s only chance combustion there’s no malice in the sting.
You can go to sleep unworried, knowing man is in control,
That these little freaks of nature have no evil in their soul.
But rest assured it’s out there and the powder’s always primed
And it will be back you know it . . . it’s always biding time
Till the range turns into kindling and the grass turns into thatch
And a fallen angel tosses out a solitary match.
Posted with respect to the work of Baxter Black. Permission requested from the estate.
