Rendezvous

I received the news this morning and it hit me without warning,
That the man I knew as Bighorn Bill had crossed the other side,
Then I thought of when I knew him and the way I listened to him,
As he told his tales and showed the world his confidence and pride.

In youth I took the merchant trade for all the gold that could be made,
I hired on with a wagon train to meet the trapper boys,
We would have a rendezvous where they would trade their beaver plews,
For powder, shot, tobacco, and to make a lot of noise.

That band of men, that brotherhood, oh I recall how tall they stood,
To be among their company and know them was a thrill,
But the man who stood so big and tall he was the greatest of them all,
The grizzled fellow known to all, the top man, Bighorn Bill.

At night by firelight he’d regale us all with his romantic tale,
Of a land of beauty most of us would never get to see,
Craggy tors that quickly rise under never ending skies,
And what it meant to be a man, alone and wild and free.

Of the boiling geyser fountains ‘neath the ever present mountains,
In the place that’s fit for demons, the place called Colter’s Hell,
And the rivers and the creeks through the vast eternal peaks,
And the spirits of the nature there that held him in their spell.

Well, that was many years ago and as in time the ebb and flow,
Of life will change directions with surprises in its haste,
Demand for beaver plews went down so most of them moved back to town,
Except for Bill, for city living wasn’t in his taste.

He built himself a cabin there among the crags and crystal air,
And lived life as he wanted with the mountains as his friends,
The rest of us went back to striving, ever constant in our driving,
In full and wild pursuit of all our goals and all our ends.

Doing what a fellow can, I’ve become a wealthy man,
By working, ever working, my bank accounts have grown,
I’ve made a pretty penny, Bighorn Bill, he hadn’t any,
But Bill was quite the richest man that I have ever known.

This is a tribute to one of my favorite poets, Banjo Patterson, the national poet of Australia. I love his "Clancy of the Overflow" and this has a similar theme, rhythm and rhyme scheme.