Meet MARLEEN BUSSMA-Dixie Chapter's Cowboy Poet

Marleen Bussma was raised on a small farm in North Dakota where horses and cows were part of daily life. As a young girl, herding cattle on horseback stirred her imagination to want to be just like Dale Evans. Farm stories and intriguing tales of the old west have had a big influence on her writing. She crafts verses on the plight of women of the west from frontier days to modern farm and ranch times. Marleen has won nine Art Spur Awards from cowboypoetry.com and served as the director for the Annual Mesquite, NV Western Roundups in 2014 and 2015. She has published a collection of her cowboy poetry entitled She Wanted To Be Like Dale and a CD is Scrapin’ By reading her original cowboy poems. She has been honored by being invited to perform at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV next January.

THE PHANTOM’S LURE

His four feet pound the thirsty dirt that paints the fence posts gray.

The wind weaves fingers pulling through his mane and tail’s display.

The phantom that he’s racing lives within his feral mind,

while teasing thoughts of freedom flicker, fade, then fall behind.

What dredged this distant dream of open range that has no gates

and fills his belly with the fire that sparks and motivates

his actions like a wild stallion flaunting fearlessness?

This craving for a life untamed is all he will possess.

His captive body cramped by the corral betrays his ache

to run unfettered, loose, untouched like moonlight’s glow, to shake

the bonds that separate him from his distant past.

Equus caballus swings his restless head as if to cast

himself back through to early years when horses all ran free.

Their bands ran with the elk and bison nursed by liberty.

The endless prairie fed them while their numbers gained and grew.

They filled the west with thunder racing towards a rendezvous

with man and fate that shaped their world and set the modern stage.

Does this horse know his brothers still run free through desert sage?

The barriers and fences work to keep his dreams repressed.

Though conquered, tamed and tethered, he’s an icon of the west.

                                                                                    Marleen Bussma