The Horse Thief & The Hang Tree


They say a thief is born of the wolves...
But our child of desire wore plainer clothes, he just ached for the things he stole. The day he made off with the reigns of a thoroughbred with a heavy mane he said, “God will surely now know my name. He found his feet on the horse and though an outlaw could hole up North he was blamed to a different course. If mercy falls late on the bless’d then a horse thief would earn a mile less. So he ran, ran without rest.

Get ye West like the rains
Be absolved in the river
From whence you came
Fly on South to the sands
Be it known the desert’s home
To a wanted man

They say his feet beat the path of a ghost, that he rode on the rim of the rocks of the coast on the tail of a Nightingale’s notes. And he aged in the ways of a seer, rode a scarecrow on a boney mare without hope, without doubt, and without care.

Get ye West like the rains
Be absolved in the river
From whence you came
Fly on South to the sands
Be it known the desert’s home
To a wanted man

Though we pray for the man on the mend the law got its way as it does in the end and forgot, he was caught, decades spent. What the folks of the town recollect are the eyes of a man who had seen through his death long before he was found short of breath. No one asked if he cared to repent but still the hang tree was ne’er lighter bent. All they hung were some clothes and a name of a man whom the desert had shaken of shame in the hollow of a hallowed refrain...