Palace in the Popple
It's a smokey raunchy boar's nest,
with an unswept drafty floor,
And pillow ticking curtains,
with knife scars on the floor.
The smell of a pine knot fire,
from a stovepipe that's come loose,
Mingles sweetly with the bootgrease,
and the copenhagen snoose.
There are workworn .30-.30's
with battered steel stocks,
And drying lines of longjohns,
and of steaming pungent socks.
There's a table for the bloody four,
and their game of two card draw,
And there's deep and dreamless sleeping,
on bunkticks filled with straw.
Ed and Lawrence, by the stove,
their gun talk loud and hot,
And Rob, has drawn a pain of kings,
and raking in the pot.
Harvey's drafted again as cook,
he's peeling spuds for stew,
While Gus, wanders in baggy pants,
receiting Dan McGrew.
Nowhere on earth is fire so warm,
nor coffee so infernal,
Or whiskers stiff or jokes so rich
nor hope blooms so eternal.
A man can live for a solid week,
in the same old underbritches,
He can walk like a man, spit where he wants,
and scratch himself where he itches
I tell you boys there's no place else,
where I'd rather be come Fall,
Where I eat like a bear and sing like a wolf,
And feel like I'm Bull Pine tall.
In that raunchy cabin out in the bush,
in the land of the Raven n Loon,
With a tracking snow lying new to the ground,
at the end of the rutting moon.
George Augustus (Gus) Bixby
Circa 1905
