Midnight Shoot Out - Cowboy Poetry by Candice James - HTML preview

Midnight Shoot Out

Platinum sheet lightning lit up the lone prairie.

A midnight shoot-out film played in the sky above me.

I heard a lone wolf howling a chilling haunting song

and then across the sky I saw ten riders riding strong.

The thundering of the horses hooves echoed thru the night

as I bore silent witness to this blurred and ghostly sight.

Five Hatfields on the left and five McCoy boys on the right

were mounted on their wild -eyed stallions, guns drawn for a fight.

The tall scar-faced outlaw riders had hatred in their eyes.

The midnight sky was lit up like a blazing hot sunrise.

Their horses were pale phantoms snorting foggy breath

carrying ghosts riders in a sky that screamed of death.

I heard Anse Hatfield’s voice blurt out "McCoy! This is your last."

"You won't ride this range again." and then I heard a blast.

Ole Ran was hit in the chest, but dead men’s ghosts don't fall.

Already dead, he couldn’t die and so he still rode tall.

Then the midnight sky became a deadly, quiet clear.

There was no noise at all in the hazy atmosphere.

I relit my campfire to burn off the ghostly chill

and thought about dead men and ghosts and reasons why men kill.