The Whisky Rider

When the sky burned low on the western plain
And the wind blew dry with a freight of pain,
He came like a shadow carved in stone,
A rider of dusk, and he rode alone.

His hat was wide, his spurs were brass,
He cut through silence like shattered glass.
With a flask on his hip and a scar on his brow,
He carried the West in the here and now.

In a ghost-town bar with a leaning door,
He poured his soul on the splintered floor.
The whisky burned like a preacher’s curse,
Sharp as love, and sweet as verse.

“To the hills,” he said, “and the railman’s song,
To the battles lost and the rights gone wrong.
To the women who wait with their hearts half-dead,
And the brothers I buried where angels tread.”

The barkeep nodded, poured one more
They drank like men who’d ridden war.
Each sip a hymn to the dying land,
To God, to dust, and a trembling hand.

He rode through cottonfields kissed by blood,
Where the chains once clinked in Delta mud.
Past the rusted signs and the neon graves
Of diners lost to progress’ waves

He saw the factories coughing soot,
And the child with dreams beneath his boot.
Through boomtown wreckage and gold-rush lies,
The whisky rider never shut his eyes.

In Dodge, in Tulsa, in Galveston,
He faced the ghosts that would not run
A railroad man with shattered teeth,
A gambler strung up underneath.

The eagle cries on a northern ridge,
While bayous sleep beneath a bridge.
The land still sings through wire and flame,
Though men forget its sacred name.

He drank in silence, slow and deep,
For the harvest lost and the towns that sleep.
He bore the ache of dying lore,
Of rivers damned and holy war.

At high mesa’s edge ‘neath an amber sun,
He met the law with a loaded gun.
They came for blood, for the debts he’d paid,
For justice carved with a rusted blade.

He didn’t flinch, he didn’t plead
He stood for every outlaw deed.
“Boys,” he said, “this land’s been bled
By kings in suits and gods long dead.”

Then came the fire, the smoke, the flame,
The sound of thunder calling name.
And when the dust cleared from the rise,
Only whisky lingered ‘neath the skies.

Now children hear by lantern’s glow
Of the whisky man from long ago
Who rode the rails, who drank the night,
Who fought for wrong and bled for right.

His flask lies buried by an old oak tree
Near the bones of truth and liberty.
And when the stars burn hot and wide,
You’ll feel him stir in the amber tide.

A cowboy spirit, wild and free
The whisky rider of the old country.