Buckaroo

We’re teaching you how to play Buckaroo
in a pub that’s falling apart at the seams.
The chair legs beneath you are littered
with the crumbs of an egg mayonnaise sandwich,
Crayons, and the red splats of dead blueberries.
You don’t understand why
but you enjoy balancing plastic
frying pans, cowboy hats, lanterns, lassos,
and shovels on the back of a weary herbivore.
You laugh when the beast has had enough
and flings life off its back in freeing anger,
ready to go again.