The Calgary Stampede is an annual rodeo, exhibition and festival held every July in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The ten-day event, which bills itself as “The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth”, attracts over one million visitors per year and features one of the world’s largest rodeos, a parade, midway, stage shows, concerts, agricultural competitions, chuckwagon racing and First Nations exhibitions.
Wrap your poem around the idea of a rodeo, exhibition or a festival and “Gitty-up!”
Phoenix Rising Poetry Guild 
Rodeo
Noisy crowd
Smell of dusty air
Gallant horse
Scrambling hooves
Showing what it is made of
Proud rider
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I think this is marvellous. The line fragments capture a sense of excitement, in my opinion.
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giddy
get a long hot dog, get beer in a cup
if you feel lucky, son–step right on up
don’t be ashamed, cowboy
don’t you be shy
you don’t win with your mouth. you don’t win til you try.
–put your money down, boy. you can do it
use the Force, Luke. one. two. three. now!
pay the winner! next? step on up young lady.
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Ah, a hoe-down square dance, or so it seems to me.
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July 6 – Rodeo
Scented Memories
A town up the road has a rodeo
Five days of good old cowboy fun
With bull riders and bronco busters
Farm and family sideshow exhibits
Reminders of my upbringing
A few decades in the past
I slowly walk exhibit row
By sows and corn and pumpkins
Old tractors draw my attention
Like the ones I drove in my youth
So much fun on those powerful beasts
So much power for a youngster
They made me feel all grown up
A great memory from long ago
Then I mosey up to the riding arena
Lean on the fence and take in the view
Then the smells of sweat and droppings
Remind me of my neighbor growing up
With cows and horses in the pasture
The scent of hot days downwind
Took me back as I plugged my nose
Never really liked hot days downwind
Know what I mean
Nevertheless, a good rodeo is exciting
As a spectator, not a participant
‘Cause I could leave at any time
That I had enough to fill my cup
Or violate my nose
Just saying
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I enjoyed this thoroughly. Just saying.
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here’s my try
http://rhymeswithbug.wordpress.com/2015/07/Blue-Ribbon-Bovine
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This puts me right at the county fair. Wonderful.
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Thank you kindly!
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EIGHT SECONDS
Bucking bronco Buckaroo,
chapped and stetson clad,
he’s had better days.
Mounting the steed
he needs to tame in
eight seconds. He reckons
it will be a feat to meet
that time frame. And then
the signal came. Stirrups and boots
leave the chute. The horse
she’s a beauty. Her duty –
to toss her charge for a loss.
Baggy pants clowns wait
to dance danger away.
Eight seconds may as well
be a week and a day!
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For me, the rhyming accentuates the bucking. I enjoyed this.
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FREEDOM REMEMBERED
If you have a home
where the buffalo roam,
you know the soul’s place is
in wide-open spaces;
you know there are borders
to reason and orders,
for what rule can impede
love’s breathless stampede?
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Oh how lovely! Love ” love’s breathless stampede”. Leaves me rather breathless.
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[…] for Phoenix’s “Calgary Fair” – 6 July 2015. Image from National Archive Digital Library, No […]
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I’m still tinkering with prose poetry, so here’s mine in prose form. Also posted at https://miskmask.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/phoenix-days-6-prose-still-smelling-those-fried-onions/
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I Still Smell Those Fried Onions
We stopped going to the County Fair when Dad said it was too expensive for all four of us, as if the cost of admission for him was okay but we all made it prohibitive. But even after we stopped going, the fair still appeared like a Lazarus miracle, rising up from the hardpan fields outside town. One day it was fields, the next ten it was a fairground. Overnight the tents went up, tables filled with apples and quilts and pumpkins, all begging for blue ribbons and mention, and off in a side tent, those big display jars with a pickled pig foetus, and a preserved lung from a cigarette smoker, and that huge cow’s heart. And through it all you’d hear kids screaming delight on spinning teacups and the rollercoaster that ached the old bones of its wooden frame. We ate hotdogs and burgers, Dad always wanted fried onions on his, and there was pink candy floss that we were never allowed near. I didn’t know the word then, bliss, but it was – a field of bliss. For two weeks – just two – and then the field returned to a scar of dust and a few bits of litter rolling across my memories.
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[…] Tanka for PHOENIX RISING JULY P.A.D. TRAVELOG – DESTINATION: CALGARY STAMPEDE […]
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Stampede of Red and White
Ground vibrates with hooves
Wild energy flashes eyes
And noses flare wide
Billows in wind white and red –
Eleven-point maple leaf.
Copyright © Hannah Gosselin 2015
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Calgary Stampede
Sheep, dogs, and miniature
donkeys, we’ve got them all.
Come to the Calgary Stampede
to see bareback broncos,
bull-riding cowboys. What’s that?
You say you’ve never wrestled
a steer? Well, grab a beer,
have no fear, we are all friendly
here. From music to parades,
we can’t be beat. This is
the greatest outdoor show
on earth, so get yourself
a seat.
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