I felt a hand grippin’ my shoulder while I was standin’ there,
‘Long side the grave of my daddy, head bent, faking a prayer…
I was thinkin’, “God, you son of a gun, I’ll look you up one day;
I’ll walk right up and ask you why you taken my folks away.’

When preachin’ was over, I turned to see whose hand it was I felt…
All I could see was the buckle he wore to fasten up his belt.
He looked just like a mountain, the biggest man I’d ever seen…
Hat pushed back and grinnin’ at me, wearin’ boots and Levi jeans.

He was a friend of my daddy’s, a man I’d known most of my life…
He was at Mama’s service, too and had always treated me nice.
It was Jim, the rodeo cowboy, famous both far and wide…
There was a time when he and my dad each wanted Ma for his bride.

They’d stayed best of friends even though one had beat out the other…
Dad wed the woman they both loved…the one who became my mother.
The bond continued strong and sure, while Jim made a name for himself,
My folks worked our place… makin’ a living…but not very much else.

Mama died when I was six; now at eight, my dad was gone, too…
Aunt Mattie said she’d take me in and raise me along with her brood.
Jim trailed us home on horseback and when he’d climbed up on his bay,
The fancy new boots he was wearin’ just plumb took my breath away.

I’d never seen anything like them and they proved a distraction of sorts…
Jim said they were hand-crafted snakeskin… they shone like smoky quartz.
He stayed a while workin’ cattle, there on my uncle’s ranch…
He helped me work out my sorrow and showed me I still had a chance.

Came time the rodeo season started up after winter’s break;
My friend said he was leaving, that he had a livin’ to make.
My guts tied in knots as we loaded up his good roping horse,
He gripped my shoulder and said, “Son… I’ll back in due course.”

I needed to tell him I knew…. he’d stayed on just to help me…
That he was my best friend and I hoped he’d forever be.
My tongue tangled up, my throat went dry but fin’ly I blurted to him,
“Whatcha gonna do with them boots… when you git through with them?”

He grinned and said I could have them… “There’s lotsa good in ‘em yet;
I’ll polish ‘em up ‘fore I ship ‘em and…I promise I won’t ferget”.
First he sent new boots he thought would fit....they were a bit too small…
I wore them ‘til they pinched so bad, I couldn’t get in them at all.

When he could he’d stop by and tell me I “sure was getting tall”;
He’d bring or send a new pair of boots when school took up in the fall.
But one day his old snakeskin boots came along in the mail…
They must have been a size fifteen, my feet rattled in them like hail…

But they were the ones I’d waited for since I was a little kid…
The same ones Jim was wearing when he came to do what he did.
The note that came in the box said, “See, Son, I said that I would;
I’m not sure these old things will ever do you much good.”

I stuffed the toes with holey socks and bandaided-up my heels…
And flapped around like somebody walkin’ on banana peels.
Kids pointed and laughed when I showed up in boots too big for my feet...
Of all those fights I got into, there’s not one I’d care to repeat.

I wore those boots until they threatened to fall right off my feet…
I never did grow into them…and never admitted defeat.
The boots belonged to my hero, the man I’d tried to become…
The cowboy who shaped me and taught me, the man who called me ‘Son’.

The new boots kept coming in the mail, long after I’d grown and wed,
Lots of them still are lined up… right there, at the foot of our bed.
The kids all started getting theirs when each of them turned three…
Just as steady as clock work they came, with an unspoken guarantee:

“This is the way I can tell you how much you all mean to me…
Yer dad an’ me ain’t much good with words, I guess you’ll all agree.
Yer daddy wanted t’ know about love when he was just a boy…
He asked about some ol’ boots of mine…but that was just a decoy;

He wanted t’ know if I’d ferget about him after a while…
Would I recall his eyes were brown or he had a crooked smile…?
“What’re ya gonna do with them boots… when you’re through with ‘em, Jim?”
So I sent ‘em, filled up with love, fer him t’ flap around in.”

Aunt Mattie had told me when my dad died, he had left a will…
That all he’d had came to me and there weren’t any debts or bills.
Truth was he hadn’t left anything…. the ranch was buried in red…
But Mattie said everything was just fine and I was not to fret.

I learned later that Jim had paid for all I’d ever owned,
The clothes I wore, the car I drove… everything til I was grown….
I ate ‘Jim food’ and went to college on a ‘Jim Scholarship’…
Rode a ‘Jim saddle’ and he was with me on my first Mexican trip.

His shoulders stoop some now as he rocks… outside, there on the porch,
His hips stiffen up a little after a day spent up on a horse…
There he is, that fine old man, with his silver-mounted saddles,
His championship buckles tell of the days he spent bull-dogging cattle.

The trophy that means the most to Jim… and to the man that he calls ‘Son’,
Is the one hanging up there on the wall, a trophy that both of them won…
It represents their love and pride, it’s the one the whole family salutes
Every day as they’re walking by…..those worn-out old snakeskin boots.

© Byrd Woodward

Byrd Woodward was born on a cow ranch in Idaho along the Payette River in 1937. She’s been away from that life for many years though she and her husband Woody always managed to keep a rural lifestyle and usually had chickens, horses and dogs for the kids. She’s written poetry since she could write and her mother tells her that she was singing rhymes to the barn kittens before that. She writes about the things she remembers and the things that shaped her life, the people and events that made her the person she is today. She and her husband retired to Arizona from Washington State and she works part time at the Sharlot Hall Historical Museum in Prescott where the Arizona State Cowboy Poets Gathering is held. Her poetry is also available on cowboypoetry.com

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