Word: cowing
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Akoan for Action Man: What kind of expensive military hardware took its form, according to the bearer's whim, from a cow's head, a rice bowl, a pair of rabbit ears, a water plantain, a whirlpool, a pumpkin, a canyon, or the cone-shaped head of the God of Longevity? The answer is kaware kabuto, which translates from the Japanese as "conspicuous helmets." These were the singular headgear worn into battle, or during the formal maneuvers preceding it, by Japanese clan leaders, before the accurate, quick-firing arms of the 19th century rendered the helmets, their wearers...
...listened still on a desert hill At the close of a bitter day, When the orange sun in wispy clouds Was set in a greenish haze? In a cold white world of deepening drifts That cover the land like a pall, Then the plaintive bawl of a hungry cow Is the loneliest sound...
Long fences now divide ranches that once ran over unbroken plains. Trailers haul horses from one job to another; those long treks in the saddle, sometimes upwards of 1,200 miles, are a thing of the past. Beef prices have plummeted. Notes Knox: "You sell a cow for $300; you got $600 in her. It's hard to make a living that way." With salaries ranging between $500 and $800 a month, cowboys don't get rich either, a fact that recently prompted Knox to move from solely punching cows to shoeing horses and doing daywork...
Most cowboy poems speak of real events and people, from bucking horses and cagey cows to old Stetson hats and long winter travels. Although they focus on the ordinary stuff of life, their truths, at least to cowboys, seem no less eternal than those penned by William Shakespeare. Some cowboy poems are bust-a-gut funny; a few are downright dirty. And some are just plain awful. But many carry an honest, primitive power, like these lines from Vern Mortensen's Range Cow in Winter...
...some Bull Durham tobacco into his rolling paper, Knox pulled tight the yellow drawstrings on the pouch. He moistened the paper, rolled the cigarette, lit it. Then he leaned over the bar and, in a soft voice, recited an old Bruce Kiskaddon verse about the dangers of an enraged cow: "Think a cow boy cain't run? Well you aint seen one sail/ When a cow blows her nose on some waddy's shirt tail...