EarCandy #9 - My Sweet Wyoming Home by Bill Staines

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about home and how to find it. I don’t know if I’ll live the rest of my days in my home of Wyoming, but the feeling I get when I listen to a song about Wyoming, is unparalleled. I know where ever I do live, I’ll have to take some Wyoming with me. Every trip I take, every place I live, I find my favorite parts, are the ones that remind me of home. But, that’s ironic, because I have lived the majority of my life trying to find a way to leave Wyoming. The more I push my home away, the more it pulls me towards its land.

“There’s a magpie on the fence rail, he’s calling out my name. And he calls me home, to my sweet Wyoming home.’

Every beautiful city I see, makes me miss “the moon, smiling in the sky.” When the street lamps and smog squeeze the light out of the stars and each tree is confined to the sidewalks they are planted on - roots covered in garbage -, I miss home. I can’t expect people to respect how beautiful and fragile nature is, when they have never seen it. Truly seen it.

Fixing fences humming “a tune, a prairie lullaby,” while the “peaceful wind” blows in my eyes, is a feeling only Wyoming has given me. Even though my prairie lullaby is usually Rylo Rodriguez or Tupac. There is nothing better than hard work; and here in Wyoming, most of us have to work for opportunity. To build something out of a land that is bare and empty. But Wyoming finds a way; it always has.

After the day is over, and I have washed the dirt from under my fingernails, I go to bed, to “an old coyote cry, a song of hope. My sweet Wyoming home.”

My Sweet Wyoming Home by Bill Staines