GATHERING THE WILD HORSES - Song Page
© words & music by Annie Wilson
from CD Tallgrass Express Comes Back
Album Note: This song is about a time I helped gather yearlings off some wild mustangs adopted into the Flint Hills from Nevada. It was hair-raising and memorable!
(Photo above is blurred and faded, but these were some of the actual horses in the song - stallion is about to run his mares.)
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Click below for video "From Poem to Song": includes 1991 reading of original poem, some story-telling by Annie about one of the horses, and later the 2007 song - illustrated with great photos of wild horses in Flint Hills. Photos & video by Dave Leiker - compiled for Pioneer Bluffs 2021 Day of the Cowboy.
LYRICS:
Up to the hilltop then west at a lope
Down to the draw and up the next slope
We’re after the mustangs on the ridge far away
To bring in the yearlings this cool autumn day
The tall grasses tremble in the October breeze
My horse snorts and jumps as he shows his unease
The air holds their wildness, their hooves print the ground
We must be approaching and soon they’ll be found
Across the last meadow and now we are nea
Upwind on the hillside they graze without fear
The wind shifts and quickly they hold their heads high
Legs bend and stiffen and off they do fly
The stallion ahead, mares and colts by his side
And two hardy yearlings on flank at his right
Ebony muscles all red-edged and black
Fluid and running and not holdin back
To the blue ridged horizon escape they do go
Trace over the rimrock across the plateau
We follow behind them at such rate of speed
We pray that this won’t be the last day we see
Three hours later they’re in the corral
The stallion still prancing his mane long and wild
He turns and I see deep down into his eyes
Their threatening innocence there crystallized