Duke

John Wayne has been in the news lately for some things he said decades ago.

I don't have anything to say about that. But I did grow up with a father who liked Westerns, and so I had a steady diet of John Wayne movies. To be honest, the John Wayne character on display in those movies reminded me of my dad. Wayne was a tough guy with a soft side, a rugged individualist. He represented a model of American manhood. There are still some Wayne movies I watch and like.

When Wayne died of cancer, I wrote a poem about him. It became one of my first published poems. 

Duke (6/11/79)

There were no funeral pyres,
no dragon ships sinking like sunset into the sea,
no, not even a sunset to be ridden off into.

There are no bards to sing Valkyrian songs,
no weary ramblers shedding dust in far-flung towns
to itch the fingers of the young;
the tales are told only during dark insomniac nights
to dull-eyed, intermittently illumined faces.

It wasn't a bullet,
a crash,
a well-placed fist.
It was a long, slow slide,
like a ride through a canyon
breathing dust, baked by sun,
chaffed by saddle, thirsting,
and drinking your own
sweat and blood.

And now your bones will gather dust,
like a worn copy of Zane Gray
hidden in a corner of the bookcase.

Pax et bonum