Preemptive Elegy for a Texan Friend

Roy Carpenter

November 2, 2025

How will his horses react

the first day he does not come

to stroke their long noses?

Their sloping necks will sweep low

not to graze but to mourn.

And though I’ve never been, I know

the ranch will be veiled in meshed shadows

cast compassionately by a wide Texas sun.

Friends’ souls will be in drought

among an unending blanching of bones –

such an immeasurable dryness,

so many souls

wind-blown over arid ground.

His song is a tilt of the heart:

when death absconded with his dearest,

I am sure he was polite.

He must have held her hand

as she climbed into the dark carriage,

taken a solemn pose to watch it

cross the arid plain.

And when the day comes that ends days

his horses’ necks will bend low

not to graze but to mourn.

I was one point on a wind-swept circle

of which he was the center.

We intersected where we had to –

the inevitable unravelling of the divine equation,

allusions to infinite love.

But when continents and oceans no longer lie between –

when God’s compass is folded again –

then we will meet and know what they mean.

I will have known him

as a traveler from Austin

whom ceremony did not accompany.

He came alone.

He held my hand and prayed once,

he said it was time to come home.

His greatness was his heart

and is still so for now.

But when it is stilled,

the strong, distraught

necks will bow down,

veiled by a wide sun,

prayers riding in on Comanche winds.

And he will beg leave

to take back his dearest again

and listen to the heart-songs

echoing back his way.

I will not know when it happens,

but his horses will carry the emptiness,

shifting restlessly against his absence

where the long grass is worn

and prayerful winds move in slowly –

and horses bow their strong necks lowly

not to graze but to mourn.

Roy Carpenter is (unbelievably) paid to pontificate about international relations, environmental management and the theology of Jonathan Edwards, but he prefers studying the baroque guitar and playing the banjo.  He does this in France, though he would prefer to do it in the Hudson River valley, where he comes from.