A riderless ass gallops up to your wagon.
Your child is sleeping through the jolts.
It’s a bad omen; it portends some kind of Agon.

Camels, drafted into the Confederacy, are gone;
their Arab handlers intermarry with the slaves.
They could scare a Colt into your wagon,

trample fences, and into the bargain
cause mules to self-impale on bared wire.
Tides rifle nautilus. The frontier agon

involves cholera and Karankawa jargon
in your kitchen, remanding sweet potatoes.
A Frenchman tries to hitch a camel to his wagon

but the beast of the qasida goes native again,
and breeds until hunting parties
guarantee reduction. Ergo: No more agon.

Even the horses hated its scent.
The Karankawa vanish into the Coahuiltecan;
But now a riderless ass gallops up to your wagon.
It’s a bad omen. It portends a new agon.

•

They sang “Green, Green Grass of Home”
sailing west from New Orleans.
They sang “Ne me quitte pas” beneath mesquite

while digging graves in Matagorda.
Pelican soup was a vile, greasy potage.
They sang “Green, Green Grass of Home”

where alligator was a luxury (the meat)
down at the Turtle Bayou Turnaround.
They sang “Ne me quitte pas” beneath mesquite.

Near the Old and Lost River they surmised
Spanish moss strains coffee pretty good.
They sang “Green, Green Grass of Home.”

They were whinging “Stuck in Lodi,”
forty Slavonians in the Big Thicket.
They sang “Ne me quitte pas” beneath mesquite.

They cut down the trees, they sawed the blocks,
split the blocks into billets, split the billets into boards.
They sang “Green, Green Grass of Home”.
They sang “Ne Me Quitte Pas” beneath mesquite.

•

Frederick Olmsted was right when he wrote
G.T.T. (Gone to Texas) was appended
“to every man’s name who had disappeared

before the discovery of some rascality.”
Brands were a language: Shanghai M, Running W.
Frederick Olmsted was right when he wrote,

or rode upright, through “a sort of Brobdingnag grass.”
Bradded L, Walking R, Swinging  J.
Every man’s name who had disappeared

singed like needles off a cactus, whiskers off rope
(this was a practice). Rocking T, Tumbling K. 
Frederick Olmsted was right when he wrote

in the alphabet we got from the Canaanites.
Oxhead A. Camel G. If it doesn’t brand, it bites.
To every man’s name who had disappeared,

someone added: Sent to heaven to hunt for a harp.
Or maybe it was another case of slow.
Olmsted slowed so he could write while he rode
among men whose names had disappeared.