His Long-Promised Reckoning

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After a life spent repairing
his cowhide heart that's ruptured
as often as a field of oil rigs
in the Amarillo heat,
a gunslinger of some years,
weathered to the amber
of Old Overholt Rye,
emerges from the final gasp
of train steam.
With a low-slung belt
and spurs as rusted as him
that jangle past the platform
of twirling parasols
which, from space, must surely
look like newborn daisies,
he makes his way
toward his long-promised reckoning —
the high-noon showdown
at La Misión de las Almas Perdidas —
stopping once
to stroke a gentle horse,
and once
to catch his breath.
And then
he stands
in the middle of the tree-lined crossroads,
whose leaves,
red as Malbec
cling to their branches
like kinfolk in the Great Flood,
praying, like him,
to hold on one last time.
But youth will outdraw him,
and the wind
will take the leaves.
Leaving behind
his legacy —
a misspelled name
on a weather-cracked wooden cross,
the ballad of a chapel bell,
and the shadow of a mournful woman
quiet as an unwound pocket watch,
who turned
like the earth
on any given day
and walked away.

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