Encore

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
once thought killed, hid from Bolivian officials
near the town of San Vincente.  They escaped
ambush, celebrating life in all its daring for many
years, upsetting the moribund mindset who dared
to assert they were buried in such mountainous terrain.

They sailed schooner ships to exotic ports, fled from
wild African game, crossed the Sahara on camel
and visited the Sphinx.  And for a time, along the
shores of Scotland’s bony lochs, they camped
and found within themselves the strength
and spirit of ancient ancestors.

They worked for a time in the Belfast shipyards,
pounding rivets into hull plates.  Then they traveled
to America, where they seized upon the roaring
twenties with delirious glee.  They dazzled in
the glimmer and like current, flowed forth
despite arduous resistance.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
age the irrational Apollyon bedeviling
every tomorrow, lived their final
years on a farm in Ashtabula,
Ohio.  Wizened and gray,
thin like broomsticks.


24 Lines
Writer’s Cramp Winner
11-7-17