OUR OLD TREE HORSE

Like many a young boy in the late forties and early fifties, my childhood was filled with imaginary feats of cowboys like my heros. Outside my class window there was an old mesquite tree whose twenty inch trunk had been bowed horizontal by Gulf hurricanes. However, a "neck" of the tree had "bravely" raised itself (in my imagination) to face the heavens, with arched branches like a noble steed pawing at the sky. Each recess I would "ride" that old tree horse into imaginary battles against evil, like my heros, Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Red Ryder, Roy Rogers, and many others then popular and seen in the movies every Saturday, no matter how much we lived in hard scrapple poverty as share cropper farmers, up at four AM to do the milking, and exhausted to bed each night at dark after chores. Yet, that old tree horse had transported me on heroic missions daily to save some damsel in distress or the world from Nazi's or yellow hordes in Korea. This poem records my distress upon finding my old tree horse being razed on my last visit to my old home town, after nearly fifty years.

Our old tree horse is felled.

Our old tree horse is dead.

Tractor Cats pawed earth around

And laid our world bare.

Our old tree horse is gone.

Boy's laughter fades as well.

Boy's dreams recede

Into a gaping void of earth laid bare.

Glorious quests we conquered.

Evil schemes destroyed,

We rode into our childhood's sunsets

On that tree horse of dreams.

We charged upon our Silvers, Triggers--

Six guns flashing in the sun,

School boy cowboys playing Sheriff,

Drawing fast and watching villains run.

We fought for truth and justice

Against all odds and foes:

We fought for Davy Crockett and the Alamo;

All evils we opposed.

We fought for all the fairness

We fought for in our games.

We fought for truth and justice

And our American Dreams.

Big Cats have now uprooted

All our childish glee.

Tonka trucks, grown heavy with new reality,

Have dumped on our all our dreams.

We're left with worlds to play in

Laid bare of certainty.

We're left to fight the good fight

Against new two-faced foes.

I'm left to fight the good fight

Against new two-faced foes

Who order trees up-ended

And Cats to paw the earth,

Who order dreams uprooted

And our dreams disposed.

Our old tree horse is dead.

Our old tree horse is gone.

But all the dreams that linger,

I'm sure we'll carry on.

I'm left to fight for fairness

For all in all their games.

I'll fight for truth and justice

And our American Dreams.

-Edromar