If I don’t know where I was, how can I get back there? Overheard in a bar in Elko awhile back I see the dip and rise of sage-covered hills a willow bank, chokecherry, wild rose, and aspen shaking in the morning breeze. Could have been a lot of places, I suppose, and I know what you’ll say-- we don’t learn who we are in a day. And yet it is a day and place that stays, when I knew I could hold the herd in an easy way. When I consider how I’ve strayed and why I’d give anything to go back and see a younger me riding tall, riding free. |
AuthorNancy Harris McLelland taught creative writing, composition, and literature for over twenty years and Conducted writing workshops for the Western Folklife Center, Great Basin College , and the Great Basin Writing Project . An Elko County native with a background in ranching. McLelland has presented her "Poems from Tuscarora" Both at daytime and evening events at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko. Her essay, "Border Lands: Cowboy Poetry and the Literary Canon" is in the anthology Cowboy Poetry Matters . Categories |