If you are alone this Christmas...., page 6

Peace On Earth
Larry Maurice

Snow blows through the little crack in the line shack window
Like a snake
It hisses, spits and slips
Grains of cold diamond sand on the shelf
It piles, melts, puddles and drips

Mostly it's warm and dry inside
You've chinked the holes, patched the rugged door
The stove draws good and there's dry pinion wood
Both dogs are curled up on the floor

There's coffee simmering and the smell fills the room
Along with hot sourdough biskets and "Dinty Moore" stew
It's Christmas Eve and you still believe
This is what "Peace on Earth " means to you

Lamplight and firelight and Owen Wister's "The Virginian"
For the ninth (and you swear the last) time
No one to talk to but memories and shadows
But somehow, you like it just fine

You're not anti-social but at times like these
Conversation can sure get in the way
There's a big difference between alone and lonely
Maybe that's why most who try it, don't stay

The boss will be down at the end of the week
Maybe sooner, if his wife gets to fussin'
He's let you work it out for the last nine seasons
(For all your own reasons)
'til it's not hardly worth the discussin'

He knows you like spending Christmas alone
He never would press you for the why?
But it makes it easier on the married guys
So he just leaves you here to get by

You suspect (just maybe) he's figured it out
You're here because that's the way you want it to be
That you just might know how to keep a couple of cows
from freezing to death
And it's your way of thinking you're free

The cows are on the hay piles built from fall's hard work
The creek's runnin' strong and hard, like a plow
They'll hide in the quakes 'til this blizzard breaks
You've done all you can do, for now

The horses are safe in the lee canyon corral
Good hay and grain in the box, plenty of dry straw
You know that this small time of the peace is the off-side of the beast
that you fight again and again
to a win a lose or a draw

Been on your own since you were a pup
Never askin' never takin' more than you're rightful due
In all that has passed and in the questions you've asked
something else became part of you

You could always feel it
In the bite of the winter wind
In the sweet sweat of a hot desert day
In the blood pounding heart of a good working horse
It would touch you and never go to far away

You see it in the fold of the mountains
Where the shadows give up to granite gray
In the flash of light on a summer storm's night
In a Buckskin a Roan or a Bay

You smell it in the campfire smoke
In prairie grass after a rain
In the wild roses' blush, the yellow rabbit brush
In comes and rides off again

It moves with the seasons, it comes and it goes
It lives in every saddle, old or new
It haunts feed lot lanes and star lit plains
It's always there and it comforts you

You hear it in an old coyote's wail
In the bawlin' of a new born calf
In the meter of the pines and the cedars' soft rhymes
In the cry of a mother's laugh

You taste it in the sweet milk of spring
In the dust of memories that don't last
In the nothing times of empty rhymes
And in all of this
The past is only the past

In all these things you find your
personal peace
They comfort you and ease your mind
They let you know that wherever you go
Peace is never that hard to find

In this there is no lonely
It's all just part of the show
And the more that you see, the more you agree
There's less that you need to know

So here it is Christmas Eve
And you're once again glad of the trail that you took
By choice, not chance, you have this special time
To check your personal "Tally Book"

Tomorrow you'll be back to the life, hard at it in the drifts and blow
Tonight it's time to respect and remember
All the good things that this time of peace brings
They warm you and calm you, like a slow burning ember

You'll give a little thanks for the special gifts
That have kept you tied to this life and to this land
Allow yourself this precious gift of peace
(Try not to forget)
how that was the original plan

Here in this quiet line shack
With that darn little drip
Not alone
But with all that you have come to understand
"Merry Christmas"
is what you carry in your heart
"Peace on Earth"
was the real plan

That peace has to come from you
It is here that the seed must be sown
For
"Peace on Earth"
"Good will to men"
starts with one man
alone