When he wrote the Torah,

he wrote the first Western.

A kosher short story by Moses,

the Jewish Louis La’mour.

Call it THE BROTHERS

for no one knows their surname.

A saga of disobedience and jealousy.

Where the farmer and the cowboy could never be friends.

A harvest scattered in a fight ’round the camp fire.

A lamb consumed in the fire.

His brothers head, stone-bashed and bloody.

The damn-varmint- brother high-tailin’ it

into the setting sun,

chased by a righteous posse.

The parents, bereft,

heavy-burdened with grief.

They’d never seen a human death,

let alone a murdered son,

killed by his brother.

An Edenic home torn apart.

At the sagas heart,

Cain and Abel,

killer and victim.

Two ways of life forever in strife.

Acres and acres of wheat and corn

trampled, beaten down by the hooves

of cattle and cow-pony.

Farmers, clutching scythe and plow,

breaking up the prairie soil.

Later, come planting time,

seed and rifle in hand.

At harvest, the scythe.

To stand against the mounted cowboys,

whistlin’ lariats, Winchesters and Colt 45’s at the ready.

Travelin’ hard.

Pushin’ the herd ever onward,

Eastward Ho!

Meat for the Nation!

“I sure am feelin’ sorry for the pony!”

as they sing it in OKLAHOMA!

Fertile fields for sequels among the stars.

“COWBOYS AND ALIENS”

“GUNFIGHT AT THE SEA OF TRANQUILITY”

Next stop for the Iron Horse?

Mars!

Not to worry boys!

Ol’ Moses stopped collecting residuals

millennias ago.