EYE OF THE STORM
(Cover for Dec. 1999, Cowboy Times)
Luck
(But Not Exactly the Beginner's Kind)
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Jammed together in the truck seat A cowboy, his wife, and three kids Wearing raggedy pants and patched-up boots And passed-down, worn-out lids. The pickup truck shuddered to a stop. It had a stock rack in the back. And, there among the feed bags and salt, Was a sorry collection of tack. He rooted through the refuse Of days spent tending cattle And pulled out from under a pile of twine An ancient association saddle. An old canvas bag came out next, It, too, had seen better days; So had the bareback rigging inside And the bull rope, old, and frayed. He dumped his gear behind the chutes And hustled to the other end To arrange to borrow a bulldogging horse From a long-time, long-lost friend. The other contestants snickered At this hand who rode in from the range. They'd never seen such equipment: Old, outdated, and strange. Then he kicked the hair off his bareback And ended up in second place, Beat 'em in the bronc and bull riding, Came in fourth in the steer wrestling race. |
They
didn't know that years ago He'd been a star on the college circuit, But married and went back home to the ranch To help his family work it. Just now, there was a note coming due And hospital bills left by his dad, So this cowboy showed up at the rodeo Because he needed a payday real bad. He gathered his family and collected his checks And limped off in that rusty old truck, While the cocky young cowboys he'd bettered that day Laughed it off as nothing but luck. Rod Miller © 1999
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About the author.........ROD MILLER.
Rod Miller is a Westerner by birth and inclination, and has lived his entire life on the rims of the Great Basin, except for the better part of a decade spent on the Snake River Plain.
Born and raised in Goshen, Utah, he grew up the son of a cowboy. Horses and cattle were a constant presence, although Rod claims he always lacked the close connection to the ways of livestock that marks the true cowboy. Nevertheless, he grew up riding horses and working cattle, and though he says he was usually in the way he sometimes managed to be in the right place at the right time. He also worked in his youth as a farm laborer and underground in a hard-rock mine.
Bitten by the rodeo bug when in high school, Rod rode bareback broncs for several years. A member of the Utah State University Rodeo Team while a student there, he once competed in the College National Finals Rodeo. He also competed in summer PRCA rodeos around the Mountain West and worked behind the chutes and as chute boss for the Cross Triangle Rodeo Company.
A degree in Journalism with an emphasis in broadcasting led Rod into the radio business for a time, where he worked as a disc jockey. He moved into television, working as a cameraman, director, producer, and writer. There he wrote his first advertising copy—which soon became a career. He’s worked as an award-winning copywriter and creative director in advertising agencies in Idaho, Nevada, and Utah for nearly three decades.
Long a fan of Western history and literature, Rod read and listened to cowboy poetry for years, with no inclination to write any of his own. That changed in the mid-1990s, when curiosity led him to try his hand at a poem. He hasn’t quit since.
Performing on stage has never been of particular interest to Rod, so he sought exposure for his poetry in print. American Cowboy editor, Jesse Mullins, published Rod’s first poem in 1997, and he has appeared on the pages of that magazine with some regularity ever since, most recently featured on the “End of the Trail” page in the November/December 2006.
Western Horseman also publishes Rod’s poems on occasion—at least a dozen of his poems have appeared there—and Editor A.J. Mangum’s full-page feature “Rod Miller, Cowboy Poet” appeared in the March, 2004 issue. More recently, poems penned by Rod appeared in the February, June, and October issues in 2006.
Rod’s poems have also showed up on multiple occasions on the pages of Range and Cowboy magazines, along with numerous local and regional periodicals, including the Denver Post and Elko Daily Free Press. Rod’s poetry is included in the anthologies Cowboys are Part Human (Southwest Whispers), Cowboys and Cookouts (Barron’s), and The Big Roundup (New West Library). He’s also represented online at CowboyPoetry.com, where he’s an unprecedented three-time Finalist and one-time winner of the Lariat Laureate Award.
Somewhere along the way, Rod’s curiosity led him to try his hand at short fiction, leading to the publication of half a dozen short stories in various Western anthologies. One of his stories, “A Border Dispute,” from Lone Star Law, edited by Robert J. Randisi and published by Pocket Books, was a 2006 Western Writers of America Spur Award Finalist. He also writes nonfiction, essays, and book reviews, and has been published in anthologies and various magazines.
That same curiosity about writing led to longer works, and Rod is the author of two published books.
One, John Muir: Magnificent Tramp, a work of nonfiction,
is part of the “America Heroes” series from Forge Books. The other is a Western novel, Gallows for a Gunman, from Kensington Publishing. A third book, a nonfiction account about the Bear River Massacre, is in production at a university press.
Teaching is another of Rod’s hobbies. For several years he taught a college course in advertising copywriting. He has taught poetry workshops to a variety of groups, including members of the Idaho Writers League and League of Utah Writers. Several essays on the art and craft of writing cowboy poetry appear on CowboyPoetry.com. Rod is a founding member of Cowboy Poets of Utah and served as Treasurer for several years. He’s also a member of Western Writers of America and currently serves as Membership Chair.
Rod has lived for the past two decades in the Salt Lake City suburbs, only an hour from his hometown—but he says the world he grew up in seems a lot farther away. He’s been married to the same woman for more than thirty-three years. Two grown daughters, a granddaughter, and a grandson round out the family.
Miller's intimate involvement with cattle and the rodeo comes through in his poetry. It has the ring of truth to it. Rod Miller has had more poems published in both Western Horseman and American Cowboy that any other cowboy poet. He has had over 70 poems that have been accepted for publication by magazines and newspapers. There is a reason why this is so.
Editor A. J. Mangum of Western Horseman wrote a full-page profile of Rod Miller in the March, 2004 issue, saying in part, "Miller is a cowboy poet with a real handle on his craft...His sense of humor, knack for crafting great sentences and flair for description have
made his work some of the best cowboy poetry we've published." His poetry indeed has all of these qualities....but it has another quality to it that is even harder to come by and even more golden.......HEART. There is a reason, he is one of the more published cowboy western poets.....HEART. You can feel it pulsing in his poetry.
You can read more of Rod Millers poetry at http://www.cowboypoetry.com/rm.htm#ROD. He was named a Lariat Laureate winner by cowboypoetry.com; and you can read a wide selection of his cowboy poetry at this web site. Another good web site featuring his cowboy poetry is http://www.cow-boy.com/miller.htm
For further information on Miller's books, contact him by e-mail:
rod@holmesco.com
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