“To Walk the Dust of Amarillo”

By sunburnt fields where cattle roam,

Where endless winds find home in stone,

I tread the paths the ancients knew,

Through skies unbroken, vast and blue.

The sagebrush whispers—haunting, slow,

Of distant times and undertow,

Of cattle drives and dusted spurs,

Where life was writ in windswept blurs.

I lived as once those rugged men,

Aloof in thought, removed from kin.

The whiskey glass, the painted door,

Distracted by the open floor.

But in this town of grit and grace,

The past and present interlace.

My hands, though calloused, missed the weight—

Of children’s laughter, love, and fate.

What use is freedom’s dusty grin,

If home is where the heart should win?

For years, I rode on ghostly trails,

While life behind me wept and wailed.

Now I have learned, with every dawn,

That gold is found when chains are gone.

Not the ones of iron or rope,

But those that bind a father’s hope.

Through Amarillo’s winds, I stand,

A man reborn by earth and sand.

No longer drawn to distant heights,

But grounded where my fire ignites.

I ride no more through silent lands,

But in the warmth of tiny hands.

No more the rider lost and lone—

But father, husband, flesh and bone.