WHAT
HAPPENED?
Growing
old was easy.
I didn’t even
try;
and never did I
realize
how swiftly
time would fly.
The
hardest part was laughing
at the
joke time played on me.
What happened to the
pretty face
I always used to
see?
Bette
Wolf Duncan
TEX
LAFITTE
His Pa
was from the Bayou,
not far from
Thibodaux.
His mother, from El
Paso,
by way of
Mexico.
Though he was born in
Texas,
and considered
Texican,
he cursed a lot in
Cajun;
and his songs were
Mexican.
He’d
played a lot of poker
from Big D to San
Antone.
Sometimes it cost him
plenty-
near everything he
owned.
But New Orleans was
different.
It was good to Tex
Lafitte.
He seldom lost a
poker game
while down on Bourbon
Street.
The
wailing horns of Bourbon Street
pulsated
in his blood.
He’d sink into their
rhythms
as if sucked by bayou
mud.
He liked the beat on
Bourbon Street.
He liked its boozy
blues;
and when he played on
Bourbon Street
he’d very seldom
lose.
Bourbon
Street, he said, was where
his
lucky lady stayed.
On Bourbon Street,
she held his hand
most every game he
played.
The fact is, down on
Bourbon Street,
his luck was just the
same;
but with more verve
and far more nerve,
he played a different
game.
One Mardi
Gras, a few years back,
it seems that Tex
Lafitte
met an East Coast
card sharp,
down on Bourbon
Street.
The card slick knew
most every trick
and tried out quite a
few….
but none of it
availed him much
because Tex knew
them, too.
Tex just plain
outplayed him
at every trick he
tried.
There wasn’t much Tex
failed to see;
Nor card the slick
could hide.
The
stranger played the poker game
as if
he’d won a lot;
but when the game was
over
it was Tex that won
the pot.
The stranger lost
more than the pot.
The stranger lost his
cool.
He called Lafitte a
dirty cheatin’,
two-bit greaser’s
fool.
He bellowed many
curses out;
but kept repeating
one.
Lafitte was just a
“dirty cheatin’
two-bit greaser’s
son”.
Tex
ignored him till the stranger
flashed
a loaded gun;
and said that only
one of them
would walk when night
was done.
Two shots exploded in
the air,
and echoed in the
street.
One was from the
stranger’s gun;
one shot was from
Lafitte.
The
stranger had a crystal ball.
The
words he said came true,
that only one of them
would walk
when the night was
through.
Only one survived the
night…
as threatened…only
one…
the one he called the
“dirty cheatin’,
two-bit greaser’s
son”.
©1999
Bette Wolf Duncan
http://www.users.uswest.net/~wacobill/
SACRIFICE CLIFF
The Land
Of Shining Mountains-
Their people knew it
when
First Maker owned Montana,
and it
wasn’t ruled by men.
The
warriors rode toward the cliff-
the children of the
long-beaked bird;
in Indian tongue, the
Apsaalookes;
Crow, the white mans
word.
The Sun
God soon, would ride off west,
packing up his golden
light;
but they’d be dead
before the dog-star
climbed into the
dusky night.
Every
breeze brought whiffs of pine
and pungent scents of
gray-green sage.
None of it could ease
their pain,
or stem their bitter
rage.
Prairie
dogs and sage hens
still scrambled
wildly on the range;
but piles and piles
of buffalo skulls
spoke loudly of the
chilling change.
No
medicine could conjure back
the herds of
buffalo,
that always had
provided food
and clothes and
shelter for the Crow.
Their
hunting grounds had shrunk away
to nearly fly speck
size.
They used to hunt on
lands as vast
and distant as the
eagle flies.
White
Father broke his treaties.
He spoke with tongue
of snake-
breaking all the
treaties
and promises he’d
make.
Their
battle was all over.
Their hunting days
were done.
The white man's guns
were many,
and their hunt had
just begun.
The Crows
could fight the soldiers
and the bullets they
possessed….
but they couldn’t
fight the pox-fire
the white men brought
out west.
Their
village had been scourged by pox
and
nearly half had died.
Montana had been
washed by blood.
Grief had swept the
country side.
Blood had
seeped into the soil
where now the
sagebrush grew;
and blood had stained
the memory
of every lodge they
knew.
There was
blood upon the prairie;
and blood upon the
sun.
Tears flowed deep inside them-
but
their ride was almost done.
The One
Who Had Made Everything
was angry with the
Crow.
The tribe owed him a
sacrifice
before He’d ease
their woes.
The
warriors gathered on the Rims
around a rocky
bluff.
Perhaps the sacrifice
they’d give
that day, would be
enough.
With
blindfolds on their ponies
down off the cliff
they plunged-
their sacrifice
completed
and their tribal debt
expunged.
The
long-beaked birds were clustered
near the
cliff on scraggly trees-
gliding, riding
downdrafts…
cutting circles in
the breeze.
It was
The Moon Of Heat Waves.
The grass was brown
and dried.
But the grass turned
black with long-beaked birds,
the day the warriors
died.
© 1998
Bette Wolf Duncan
