Cowpoke shares lyrical view of reincarnation

If you have read this column for any length of time, you know by now that I have a passion for rhyming poetry. And you’ve also put up with my many attempts at humor, which in my opinion, is a most important trimming on the challenging trials of life.

My first 20 years in public education after World War II, I spent in Montana. Lived for the first six years in Poplar in northeast Montana – headquarters for the Fort Peck Indian reservation (Assiniboine and Yankton Sioux) and while teaching Indian kids the ways of the white man, the Indians taught me ways of the Indian as well.

My first school superintendency came later in central Montana and I hired a coach who was really a cowboy at heart. He had a ranch on the Stillwater and we remained friends until he passed away many years later.

Tom Eaton could recite western poetry until the cows did come home. Most of it is way too long to include in a column like this, but one by another cowboy author, Wally McRae of Forsyth, Mont., tickled me so much that I’d like to share it with you. I had to reduce it considerably for space limitations; hope that doesn’t spoil it for you: (McRae was in no way meaning anything but humor)

“What does reincarnation mean?” a cowpoke asked a friend.

His pal replied, “It happens when yer life has reached its end.”

The box and you goes in a hole, that’s been dug in the ground.

Reincarnation starts in when yore planted ‘neath a mound.

In a while, the grass’ll grow upon your rendered mound.

Till some day on yer mouldered grave a lonely flower is found.

And say a hoss should wander by, and graze upon this flower

That once was you, but now’s become yer vegetative bower.”

The posey that the hoss done – ate up with his other feed,

Makes bone, and fat and muscle essential to the steed.

But some is left that he can’t use, and so it passes through,

And finally lays upon the ground; this thing that once was you.

Then say, by chance, I wanders by and sees this on the ground.

And I ponders and I wonders at the object that I found.

And I thinks of reincarnation of life, and death and such.

come away concludin’ Slim – you ain’t changed all that much.

Let me reincarnate briefly a bit on a recent column and AARP – more interest expressed in that column than anticipated. Of high interest to me was the number suggesting what else we could do to bring drug prices down to more reasonable levels. So, in a nutshell the ones most often mentioned are:

Legalize the safe importation of drugs from other countries such as Canada.

Empower our government to negotiate lower drug patient costs such as Canada does.

Put an end to the practices that prevent the development and marketing of lower drug cost. Veterans Administration already is permitted to do this for veterans.

Tags: community, senior