More Thunder Butte Poetry

Here's a poem written by cowboy poet, John Crowley, that describes a real event one night years ago at the family's homestead on Thunder Butte Creek:

NIGHT ON THUNDER BUTTE CREEK

The blackness of the night wrapped around us like a shroud,
Clammy and evil, full of dreadful sound
The scream of woman with mortal wounds
Full of snickering--Why? I only wish to live the night
To not succumb in fear to this anguish all about

The creek called Thunder Butte, runs full and rippling in the dark
Forested thick with trees that screen the evil lurking there
There eyes glow fierce, then disappear amid the undergrowth
But howls persist, like the banshee of legends mark
She comforts me, but trembles as the panther tears and rips
The splintering roof, starved and after one fat child.

I'm crying now, and clutch my mom, the one protection from
This demon of the night who will not stop until he's done, but
A little shanty ranch house can`t withstand the onslaught of this
mad gargoyle tearing there, one thought in mind, only one
This fat child and why he fears the dark.

My mother not yet done, grabs an old and rusty 12 gauge gun from
Beside the bed, one loud explosion, blasting these little ears
Another hole appears, the moon shines through our flimsy roof
Where panther and twelve gauge spanned the years, to spell
Out doom for that old puma, sobbing, snarling off into the gloom.

--Mike Crowley