Ethics and values making their way down the generations, the complexities of married life on a ranch, irreverence toward religious convention, and reverence for the Lord’s creations round out this issue’s selections.

Selected by guest poetry editor Rod Miller

PASSING THE MANTLE

How small he was
And how he struggled
with the work;
He irrigated, fed, doctored,
And learned, as I had,
The difference between
Right and close,
Then sought my approval
To validate his knowing.

How strange it seems,
And how right,
That a simple passage
Of time has brought
Us here where I finish
This day of favorite work
And look to my son
For his approval.

—Vess Quinlan, San Acacio, Colorado

THE COWS CAME FIRST

My mother said she realized
with Dad the cows came first;
if cows and she both needed drinks,
she knew who’d die of thirst.

Though Mom competed most her life
with cows for Dad’s attention,
The sum of times when she won out
is hardly worth the mention.

If Mom had planned a dinner
or they’d been invited out,
Dad promised he’d be in on time,
but she had cause to doubt.

It wasn’t fate, it was my Dad—
he’d start a job too late
and thinking he had time enough,
he wouldn’t want to wait.

By the time he got back to the house,
my mom would be irate;
she knew not which excuse he’d use
but could anticipate—

he had to pull a windmill or
he had to pull a calf,
perhaps bring back an errant bull;
she almost had to laugh.

And when the two got on in years
Mom was the first to go.
She’d asked for flowers on her stone,
but did she get them? No!

Dad bought one stone for both of them,
and he had it engraved;
a cow and windmill took the place
of flowers that she craved.

When Mother said the cows came first,
she knew my Dad too well—
above her final resting place
that cow will always dwell.

—Jane Morton, Colorado Springs, Colorado

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