"Honesty is something
that never goes out of style."Waylon Jennings
In summer, he used his white straw hat
to cover a head, bald-pink as a babys bottom.
Some said larceny lurked in his very jeans.
Some said his great-grandpa could adjust,
&slide&. a branding iron on hide to generate
whole new herds of market cattle,
him squinting only at the blue-smoke singe
of burning hides.
Many said he married Martha for her fathers
ranch; her sections only larger steers to sear
his altered brand upon. Grease the skids
of his Brahma hump of an ego.
Several mourners said that the melanoma
that took him at the end, snuck in slow as a Texas drawl,
and marked him up real good, with Gods reward.
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