The Cowboy Poetry of 'Doc' Hayes

"Cowboy Poets: Minstrels of the West" makes you want to pack a bag and head north. The video's beautifully filmed performances and stunning scenery make for great armchair traveling to three top Canadian gatherings in Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia. The film opens with lush panoramas graced by "When Cowboys Rode as Kings" by Ben Crane (written by poet Bryn Thiessen); the song itself is worth the price of the video. The opening gathering scenes show Manitoba professor and poet Dale (Doc) Hayes reciting his "Shorty," with performances of the poem at all three gatherings artfully spliced together. And it just gets better in this professional, well-edited production that has aired on Canadian television.

You have a front row seat and a free ticket to shows that include American and Canadian AWA-nominated poets Chris Isaacs, Mike Puhallo, and Thiessen, all giving polished performances of classics and their own work. Puhallo's recitation of his "Sacred Orb" as he saddles his horse is unforgettable. There is plenty of humor and a good selection of serious poetry. Excellent musical talent includes performances by Juanita Clayton (with an autobiographical yodeling song), Ray Martin (award-winning Manitoba musician) and Ed Brown (also an artist and poet).

There's a wonderful growing trend of poets, musicians, and fans crossing borders among gatherings in the U. S. and Canada, and this video should go a long way toward encouraging those migrations. The video is available postpaid for $25.00 (US); Shadowland Productions, 51070 Range Road 221, Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada T8E 1G8; 866-269-2698 or from www.SilverCreekMusic.com.

Review by Margo Metegrano, CowboyPoetry.com

From the filmmakers:

COWBOY POETS: MINSTRELS OF THE WEST
A Video Collection of Cowboy Poetry and Music – Volume 1

What is the definition of cowboy poetry? Dale (Doc) Hayes explains it best: He recalls being in a poetry competition at a gathering in Alberta, Canada. "I felt I had the competition aced. Though the fellow sitting next me was feeling pretty confident, too. A mutual friend of ours got up and did a couple of poems. He wasn't a very dynamic poet, but a darn good one. Then he started doing this poem about having to put down his 14-year-old blue healer dog. I tell ya, a minute into the poem, and every woman in that audience was crying and most of the men were blowin' their noses, and I hit my friend in the ribs and said I think we just lost this poetry competition. Because he was talking about the everyday experience of a person’s life and that's what cowboy poetry is all about."

Cowboy Poets-Minstrels of the West is a video collection of cowboy poetry and music. It is volume 1 of a series featuring some of Canada's finest, with a visit from an American icon. Forty-eight minutes of laughter and tears with poetry by Dale (Doc) Hayes, Mike Puhallo, Will Rogers Award Nominee and rancher- turned-poet, Bryn Thiessen.

This production was produced in the summer of 2001, over the course of 10 days and three poetry gatherings. We visited the 2nd Annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Brandon, Manitoba; the Pincher Creek Gathering in Alberta (largest in Canada); and a Cowboy Festival held at the Historic O'Keefe Ranch located near Vernon, BC.

While producing this video, Hired Gun Productions put together a documentary, also titled Cowboy Poets-Minstrels of the West. This documentary will air across Canada in early 2002 on the Global Network. The US broadcast date is pending.

And you can.... buy it at www.SilverCreekMusic.com

The challenges and circumstances confronting the women who went with their cowboy husbands into the west before the turn of the 20th century demanded a quality of human being worthy of respect then and now. This poem is based on words from an old timer at the Rawlings, Wyoming Gathering.

She had tended the fire but now it burned low
As the oil lamp in the window reflected the snow.
Six times now she had sat there 'til late in the night
And each morning she had awakened with first light.
He said he would return seven days now gone by
and with each passing hour she struggled not to cry.
The snows were early and so much was to be done,
Her help so little she being so big with their first one.
She'd begged him not to go,
what with the dark skies, the sprinkles of snow,
but he'd said they needed the meat
so he'd kissed her, said "... stay warm and sweet".
An elk or two was needed to get them through
and he rode off after piling up extra firewood
and doing all he could
to be sure she would be O. K.
Sleeping in the chair as the seventh dawn came,
waking when she thought he'd called her name,
She threw the door open onto a bright sunny day.
There under the shed roof stood his old bay,
reins dragging, saddle empty, all covered with snow.
Her heart broke as her vision dropped to below,
seeing the boot, spur snagged tight in the cack,
she knew then that he would never be coming back.
How would she survive?
How could she keep herself and her baby alive?
What would she do?
Her body told her soon she'd be fending for two.
She looked up into the Big Horns and on into the sky
and knew, that in God's Grace, she must get by.
She persevered, not one day did she ever quit,
She hung on and kept on and stuck to it,
Battered by life and circumstances til she was worn,
never giving up as her lonely journey started the day my Grandpa was born.

© 2000 D.Hayes/All Rights Reserved/Assigned to Alberta Cowboy Poets
Association for publication in ACPA Poetry Anthology II to be published by
Hancock Publishing.

Short Cut is a bucking horse,
and about as mean as anything you've ever seen.
He always starts and he stays the course
totally rank and every second in the saddle obscene.
Side winding sucker'll switch to pile driving and then go spinner,
separating you from saddle and proving you're no gold buckle winner.
Laying there, all those stars floating around,
you getting real intimate with that rodeo ground,
knowing you're at least half dead,
and wondering if they can reattach your head,
then you hear the bull fighters start to pray
cause old Short Cut is coming back your way
to stomp you into the fairground sod
and put you up face to face with God.
At first you think it's just a nightmare you're dreaming
that is 'til you hear the buckle bunnies screaming
and last you saw of that horse he was up in the saddle with the pickup man.
Though you've been dusted and everything is busted, you can stand!
And run! No one in the stands would've believed you could run.
And fly! Over the fence an eye blink ahead of that son of a gun.
No moral tales. No tales of gold buckle glory.
Just simple description and simple prescription:
You draw Short Cut and the story gets gory.
Listen up lad! My advice is worth trusting.
Give 'em back that number and throw in for the mutton bustin'.

© June 2000, “Doc” Dale Hayes, All Rights Reserved

In winter, 1969, two friends and I were hunting grizzlies on the
south shore of the Lesser Slave Lake in Northern Alberta. We rode down
off of a ridge and through what remained of an abandoned ranch. The
barn was tumbled in, the fences down and the old log style house stood
open to those winds that never cease. One of my hunting partners had
ranched near there for a number of years. He told us the story of the
family that had homesteaded there many years before. This is their
story.

On the Lesser Slave I froze. I'm here to tell you how I froze.
You know you just can not believe how cold that wind blows.
At 45 below the moaning of the wind becomes a living mournful noise.
Elizabeth Anne left me and she took the little girl and the boys.
And our cabin became a cold and dead thing,
As cold and as lonely as when the wolves sing
The news of the death of a rider on the ice whose horse has broken through
Or when starvation takes another Indian at the reserve on the Louchoux.

On the Lesser Slave, I froze. Oh let me bear witness how I froze.
The cheap whiskey took my mind and the ice took my fingers and toes.
I forgot about my cattle and I drove my horses away.
I was drunk through each night and slept through most of each day,
My lips frost bit and the cold sealed up my mouth
While I laid in my buffalo robes and ached for the woman who'd gone south.

I guess I would have died wrapped in self pity and buffalo hide
Except Rupert Broken Leg Wolf and his new Hobema wife
Came by, looking for a place to get warm, and they saved my life.
They started up the fires and they pulled me back into my head,
Though now I curse them when the memories flood back and I'm almost dead
For want of that woman, when the wind blows,
And the memory of her drifts about me like the blowing snows.

Dale "Doc" Hayes ©1975, renewed© 2001