January 28, 2003

Maury Maverick dies at 82. A friend of and mentor to the original Eagle Bone Whistle.

Maury asked Naomi Shihab Nye to read this at his funeral.

"The Mustangs" by J. Frank Dobie

I see them running, running, running
From the Spanish caballadas to be free,
From the mustanger's rope and rifle, to keep free,
Over seas of pristine grass, like, fire-dancers on a mountain,
Like lightning playing against the unapproachable horizon.

I see them standing, standing, standing,
Sentinels of alertness in eye and nostril,
Every toss of maned neck a Grecian grace,
Every high snort bugling out the pride of the free.

I see them vanishing, vanishing, vanished,
The seas of grass shriveled to pens of barb-wired property,
The wind-racers and wind-drinkers bred into property also.

But winds still blow free and grass still greens,
And the core of that something which men live on believing
Is always freedom.

So sometimes yet, in the realities of silence and solitude,
For a few people unhampered a while by things,
The mustangs walk out with dawn, stand high, then
Sweep away, wild with sheer life, and free, free, free
Free of all confines of time and flesh.

 

Happy Trails