photo of horses drinking, courtey of S.W. Kline

           WHERE PONIES COME TO DRINK
        By Henry Herbert Knibbs    

Up in Northern Arizona
there's a Ranger-trail that passes
Through a mesa, like a faëry lake
with pines upon its brink,
And across the trail a stream runs
all but hidden in the grasses,
Till it finds an emerald hollow
where the ponies come to drink.

Out they fling across the mesa,
wind-blown manes and forelocks dancing,
Blacks and sorrels, bays and pintos,
wild as eagles, eyes agleam;
From their hoofs the silver flashes,
burning beads and arrows glancing
Through the bunch-grass and the gramma
as they cross the little stream.

Down they swing as if pretending,
in their orderly disorder,
That they stopped to hold a pow-wow,
just to rally for the charge
That will take them, close to sunset,
twenty miles across the border;
Then the leader sniffs and drinks
with fore feet planted on the marge.

One by one each head is lowered,
till some yearling nips another,
And the playful interruption
starts an eddy in the band:
Snorting, squealing, plunging, wheeling,
round they circle in a smother
Of the muddy spray, nor pause
until they find the firmer land.

My old cow-horse he runs with 'em:
turned him loose for good last season;
Eighteen years; hard work, his record,
and he's earned his little rest;
And he's taking it by playing,
acting proud, and with good reason;
Though he's starched a little forward,
he can fan it with the best.

Once I called him--almost caught him,
when he heard my spur-chains jingle;
Then he eyed me some reproachful,
as if making up his mind:
Seemed to say, "Well, if I have to--
but you know I'm living single..."
So I laughed.
In just a minute he was pretty hard to find.

Some folks wouldn't understand it,--
writing lines about a pony,--
For a cow-horse is a cow-horse,--
nothing else, most people think,--
But for eighteen years your partner,
wise and faithful, such a crony
Seems worth watching for, a spell,
down where the ponies come to drink.

 

  

HENRY HERBERT KNIBBS.......poet/cowboy poet

          In a literary world that does not recognize "Cowboy Poetry" as poetry, Henry Herbert Knibbs is an acknowledged poet.  At the same time, in the realm of "Cowboy Poetry" he is considered to be one of the preeminent classic cowboy poets. There are a handful of  cowboy poets that are generally included in anthologies of North American poetry; and Henry Herbert Knibbs is one of them. His poem, "The Trail Makers" is included by literary elites (such as Louis Untermeyer) in their anthologies of first-rate American poems. In this respect, he is in a class with Robert Service-"Spell Of The Yukon" & "Men That Don't Fit In".  Knibbs and Service, in  these poems, crossed over from what is clearly "cowboy poetry" into the realm of what the literary world considers to be poetry. Knibbs has many such poems, including "Make Me No Grave".

     Henry Herbert Knibbs had a very interesting life. Perhaps that is why he is such a versatile poet. As a boy growing up, he saved his money and purchased a violin.  He learned to play it secretly, and kept it hidden in a trunk in the attic. (Why, I don't know.)  As it turned out, when his parents finally discovered his love for the violin, they encouraged him to perfect his mastery of it. Apparently he hadn't mastered it sufficiently at that time: He was required to practice outside in the woodshed. From then on, his passion for the violin was one of the great loves of his life. It was a comfort to him throughout his life. In his waning years, he ran the Farthing Hub Violin Shop at Banning, California. 
 
     He was educated at Woodstock College, Ontario at the age of 14, and Bishop Ridley College at St. Catherine's, Ontario at the age of 15 for three years.     Knibbs certainly had a colorful and varied  history. At the age of 18 he migrated to Buffalo, New York and worked as a wholesale coal salesman in Michigan and Ontario. Other jobs in those earlier years were as a clerk for the Lehigh Valley Railroad, a two-year stint as a hobo in the Mid-West, and a stenographer in the Division Freight Office of the BRP Railway in Buffalo, New York. At the age of 34, he went to study English at Harvard for three years. (I'd like to know more about his two year stint as a hobo, wouldn't you?)

          In 1910 at the age of 37, Henry moved to California where he wrote his first Western novel, Lost Farm Camp. He wrote six books of poems and was the author of thirteen novels. He wrote poems and stories for various pulp magazines of the time. In 1933 when in his story Pericles Honeymoon,  he inadvertently quoted the gestation period of a mare as being nine instead of eleven months, he was criticized  and defamed for this error by his peers. This inadvertent error caused irreparable damage to his career and none of his stories were ever again accepted for publication. (Reading between the lines of the various bios of Henry Herbert Knibbs, I get the impression that some of his peers failed to accept him because "he wasn't a real life cowboy".....and because, in many respects, they simply weren't in his league.)

           Well folks, here's to Henry Herbert Knibbs...one of the best of the best...cowboy poet/poet! 

     You can read more of his poems in  Cowboy Poetry Classic Rhymes by Henry Herbert Knibbs , a Cowboy Minor Productions book; Janice M. Coggin (Editor), H. Mason Coggin (Editor)-  
                                             http://www.cowboyminer.com/books.html
                                                                 

                                                           HOME                         NEXT