This poem comes from Autumn Leaves:

 

A season for all things,

Boot prints faded from the land.

The cowboys are gone

Like Custer’s Last Stand.

 

No more night herder singing

A lonesome cattle call.

No friendly campfire banter

In soft Texas drawl.

 

No more loaded chuck wagon,

Clattering over the trail,

And no crabby trail cook

Giving the cowboys pure Hell!

 

No more dust and sweat,

Long hours in the saddle.

Riding swing or drag,

Always herding the cattle.

 

No more painted ladies.

No wild cattle town.

The sun for the cowboy

Has already gone down.

 

The prairie’s plowed up

Thanks to a man named John Deere.

The cowboys are long gone,

But the cows are still here.

 

They’re kept in large feedlots,

Fed good every day —

Never to graze on green grass

The old fashioned way.

 

They’ll never smell a branding fire

Or feel a branding iron.

They’ll know only force-feeding,

And they’ll sure know barbed wire.

 

I watched a rancher

Out in the rain and muck,

Feeding his cattle

From his old pick up truck.

 

It’s written that the West isn’t a place,

But a state of mind.

Yet something is missing,

Like yesterday’s wine.

 

It’s the end of an era,

But shed not a tear.

The cowboys are gone,

But the cows are still here.