The Unionville Chronicles
Eighth Canto
John Henry was born the son of two mustangs,
Innocent of bridle, saddle, rowel or reins.
Hearty for mountains and swift over plains,
He was raised in the faith of his herd.
On the day he was foaled, the sun didn’t shine,
But he gamboled like a drunkard and swayed like a pine
His sire bragged to his dam that their son would do fine
Bringing cow-horses and pack-mules The Word.
As a yearling, John Henry went to the prophets’ school
To study prayer, preaching, tradition and rule;
And to swear his existence to life as a tool
Of any purpose or persuasion the spirits preferred.
His course was complete, one short year after.
He said his goodbyes amid sorrow and laughter,
Though his sweet mother cried as he headed for pasture,
She neighed only a prayer and his sire concurred.
Lonesome but driven, reciting his hymns,
John Henry descended the side where night dims
To give strength from his back, and the range of his limbs
In a new life that’s saddled and ridden and spurred
For the winds and the grasses and the spirits had spoken
What his life as an evangelist would betoken:
Hope for the hearts of horses who’d been broken
And the minds of those mules willing to be lured.
So he wandered Grass Valley in the north silver state
And found a corral and stood there by the gate.
It wasn’t a long time that he had to wait,
‘Til a man let him in where the other colts stirred.
John Henry announced himself, humble but bold
As a Priest to the broken, breaking or old:
To give calm to the nervous and warmth to the cold.
But the other colts found all his preaching absurd.
So John Henry taught all the equine faith’s tenets
To colts, then to mules who just wouldn’t get it.
One day on the floor of the ranch pony Senate
They declared preaching a crime with a steep fine incurred.
By grace and devotion, John Henry continued
His mission divine, paying fines that ensued
Such as stolen feed bags and kicks to his sinew
And will do so until he is finally interred.
One year later a cowhand, bowed from hard time, elected
to take our hero away from the herd he’d injected
With religion and virtue, they’d so soon rejected.
Man and horse roamed together ‘til the differences blurred.