Monday, February 24, 2014

Poem: And Roy Rogers Sang the Torah


And Roy Rogers Sang the Torah

North we go a-roaming from Wyoming to Montana
All upon a tankful of George Custer’s diesel gas
Jesus Christ is savior on the local reservation
But still we eat our snow peas on the Powder River Pass

Eastward in the gloaming from Wyoming to Mount Rushmore
Searching for the faces in the South Dakota night
Ripping down through Deadwood in the name of Rapid City
To see Abe Lincoln glowing in the cold arena light

The Seder means a shuffle low from Buffalo to Casper
Cruising for a synagogue and good unleavened bread
Jesus ain’t no savor in our private schoolhouse kitchen
And Jewish New York cowboys need a place to lay their heads

Gave us such a chilling there in Billings, South Montana
Fictive flames of Zion just beneath the bookstore glass
Driving back down ninety just as fast as wheels would take us
To watch them burning ridges in the deep Wyoming grass.



First published in The Redneck Review of Literature
(Pocatello, Idaho)

From the collection Great Showtunes of the American Stage  

Photo by MJV

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