The Sliprails and the Spur (just like a girl)

 

Acknowledgements to Henry Lawson 1899 for his original piece of the “The Sliprails and the Spur”

It is an evocative piece with a steady cadence to suit the time.

I have often felt he was “too close” to the hardships and it is difficult for us to understand the context from this far away.

Anyway this little story does not attempt to mimic Henry, rather to compliment the tale.

 

 

We never had a gate, or a big swinging door

To keep the cattle out, or the dust off the floor

But everyone has one now

Perhaps they think

That we were poor

 

It did not seem hard

To keep the heifers out

And slide the sliprails home

No need for fancy hinges

Or shiny bits of chrome

A sapling of timber 

Would do the same thing

 

And far beyond the dusty mob

That circled in the yard

We glanced toward the ridge

Where two mountain gullies meet

Where a horse may gallop down

With a rider long forgotten

Finally, homeward bound

 

For days are long and nights are  longer

When we are left behind

While the ones we do remember

Travel far and wide

It is not the place to go

For one who’s “Just a girl”

 

Now at the end of this long day

I will ride out to check the pocket, near the spur

Should I pick the roan, or maybe the bay?

They both deserve a break.

Now one has the saddle blanket on, it looks like I’ll ride her.

 

I’ve pulled the girth strap tight

Raise my knee against her gut

And hitched it even tighter

With the Surcingle set, just to be sure

Grab a handful of mane

My left boot in the stirrup

Heft up, and sitting tight.

 

Then with a whistle and a shout

It makes her wheel about

Till I slacken off the rein

And let her have her head.

With ears back, against an arching neck

This mare knows how to race

Across the flat, at pace

 

Till we slow and walk

Across the corduroy

And duty calls, I turn her head for home

That stubborn cur-s-ed roan

Only wants to roam

It’s no use twisting with the rein

It will not make it matter

She’ll barely raise a canter

 

Then there comes a cooee

A flash among the trees

Between lancewood stumps and splinters

Down the broken sandstone scree

With a crack of stock whip leather

He’s standing in the stirrups

Shouting…………  I can’t quite hear it

Sounds like………

“……just a girl”

 

The roan stamps indignant

And with the bit between her teeth

Bolts like lightning

To the disappearing feet

Of a younger little gelding

Who has not yet seen defeat

 

We break past the timbers

And race across the flat

He laughs and shouts again

The roan responds to that

We start to run them down

As we straightened up for home

I feel her tire beneath my knees

Her breath sounds like a wheeze

 

The gelding’s sides are flecked with foam

As the whip sings one more time

I rake my spurs along her flanks

And she leads the gelding home

It’s clear that even, if there was a gate

This mare was, not arriving late

 

She props beside the slip rails

Nostrils flaring wide

And flicks her tail

Her eyes like dancing fires

Snorting, a look to make you dread

Rattling the bit and bridle

With every shake of her head.

 

I lean back in the saddle

The stirrups splaying wide

The gelding barely ambles

His riders whip, dragging by his side

I wink at him and say

“If you want to win a race

Between the sliprails and the spur

You will have to learn to ride

Just like a girl”