PROSPECTING

Looking for placer pangar,
  Loafing about in the hills,
Getting your grub with a rifle,
  Taking your drink from rills. 
Getting your bed from the spruce tree,
  Taking your course by your dreams,
Just camping alone in the mountains,
  Siwashing along the streams.

Locating the hind sight on Nature,
  Traveling alone and far,
Thinking with no one to guide you,
  Digesting the things that are. 
Back trailing the life that’s past you,
  Peeping at what’s in store,
Pondering over life’s mistakes,
  Wondering, how many more.

Dreaming alone of childhood days,
  Regretting some things that are past,
Recalling lost opportunities,
  And chances too good to last. 
Living your whole life over,
  Recalling the daily grind,
Thanking your God that it’s over,
  Glad that you’ve left it behind.

But still regretting your errors,
  Sad for some things you have done,
Wishing that you had coppered some plays
  As you count them one by one. 
Now living a life, clean, decent,
  For man never sins alone,
Getting a grip on your ego,
  Coming at last to your own.

You dream and you hunt all summer
  Till you notice a chill in the air,
Then you think of your warm snug cabin
  And you feel that you’d rather be there. 
Then you head over unblazed passes
  Till at last you herd with your own,
And though you located no pangar
  You are better for being alone.

THE WOMAN THAT YOU PASS BY

My trade was old when the world was new,
  Ere the pyramids rose by the Nile
Men quitted their wives, and gave me their goods
  For the warmth of my kiss, and my smile. 
For never was wife who could hold her man
  By the honeymoon’s afterglow
Did I veil mine eyes and beckon to him,
  God’s truth, and ’tis you who know.

My trade was old when the world was new,
  Long ere Caesar ruled in Rome,
To spend their gold in a harlot’s cell
  Patricians quitted home. 
And high born dames since the world began
  Have learned to sit and to sigh
And to patiently wait for their lords to leave
  The woman that you pass by.

I’m only a pawn in the game called life,
  Yet I take what you never could hold;
I garner the kisses you’d barter life for
  And with them, I gather your gold. 
I garner the best of your manhood’s prime
  Then quit them when shattered in health;
I bring to heel the ones that you love
  And smiling I shear them of wealth.

To garner the wealth that you hold in store
  I must keep me surpassing fair,
For the life that I lead is an open book
  And the game that I deal is square. 
Stop—­think of the maids and wives you know
  As you drift thru life’s subtle game—­
How many are dealing as straight as I? 
  How many can say the same?