W

.       H. D. Koerner’s painting Hard Winter (below), originally appeared as a black and white reproduction illustrating the novella entitled Short Grass, by Hal G. Evarts.  The text and its images were serialized in The Saturday Evening Post from the third week of May 1932 through July of that same year.  Hard Winter  revealed a tragic figure who experienced the  hardships of the western frontier. This painting  is notable in that regard; it stripped the romanticism often associated  with cowboy mythology as portrayed in most western paintings at the time.  In the featured  poem  Blowing Snow , Doc Hayes does likewise.
 



In winter, 1969, two friends and I were hunting

                                      Blowing Snow

On the Lesser Slave I froze. I'm here to tell you how I froze.
You know you just can not believe how cold that wind blows.
At 45 below the moaning of the wind becomes a living mournful noise.
Elizabeth Anne left me and she took the little girl and the boys.
And our cabin became a cold and dead thing,
As cold and as lonely as when the wolves sing
The news of the death of a rider on the ice whose horse has broken through
Or when starvation takes another Indian at the reserve on the Louchoux.

On the Lesser Slave, I froze.  Oh let me bear witness how I froze.
The cheap whiskey took my mind and the ice took my fingers and toes.
I forgot about my cattle and I drove my horses away.
I was drunk through each night and slept through most of each day,
My lips frost bit and the cold sealed up my mouth
While I laid in my buffalo robes and ached for the woman who'd gone south.

I guess I would have died wrapped in self pity and buffalo hide
Except Rupert Broken Leg Wolf and his new Hobema wife
Came by, looking for a place to get warm, and they saved my life.
They started up the fires and they pulled me back into my head,
Though now I curse them when the memories flood back and I'm almost dead
For want of that woman, when the wind blows,
And the memory of her drifts about me like the blowing snows.

 Dale "Doc" Hayes ©1975, renewed© 2001

 

About Dale "Doc" Hayes....
 

    "Doc" Hayes says that the story of the family that settled near the Lesser Slave Lake in the poem, and who were overwhelmed by the challenges of the far North, shows how much sacrifice it took to open Northern  Canada as it has been opened today.

       He is a professor at a public university in Manitoba, Canada.  "Doc" Hayes runs a small grazing operation for cattle of relatives and neighbors back in the bush near Nesbitt, Manitoba and, each year travels to different gatherings and poetry festivals around North America.  At one time, he tried rodeoing but a blind bucking horse convinced him that what he was was a school teacher. Since then his non-job focus has been on studying and recording tales of the cowboy way. He came by his love of western storytelling and cowboy poetry as a result of sitting in on bunk house bull sessions in Northern Arizona back in the late '40s. 

        For over forty years he has collected cowboy stories and remembrances of Canadian and American cowboys that often serve as a basis for his poetry.  He has had several books of poetry, academic and western, published and his recent cd-rom Conversations With an Old Horse is made up of his own original poetry and several selected stories of the "Old West," backed up by several good traditional western musicians. 

        "Doc" Hayes has spoken at over 400 educational and organizational training and motivational meetings since the mid '70s. He  has been featured at many of the major gatherings in both Canada and the United States. "Doc" is the producer and host of the Brandon Cowboy Poetry Gathering and the Canadian Cowboy Christmas: and he has been featured on both regional and national television shows on Cowboy Poetry. He is a member of the Academy of Academy of American Poets and the  Academy of Western  Artists. You can read more of his poetry at www.cowboypoetry.com/dochayes.htm

                                     Your comments are invited.     dochayes@prairie.ca

Under copyright protection. The poem on this web page may not be excerpted, copied, or reproduced, used or performed in any form (graphic, electronic or mechanical) without the express written permission of  the author.