Heart of hobo continues to beat

From staff reports

Nine years ago the Sun ran a story entitled, “Heart of a hobo beats inside 90-year-old Honor man” about Clive Haswell, a wordsmith and train hopper during the Great Depression. Last winter, we heard from Dalena Nichols in Locust Grove, Oklahoma, who knew Haswell from a visit to the Platte River and read about him on GlenArborSun.com. She sent us these unpublished words by the hobo poet:

Dachshund

By Clive Haswell
(The frustrated Rover)

The Nichols have a sausage hound
Who’s somewhat like my cat,
Because the wrong side of the door
Is, most always, where she’s at.

Though she is underneath a quilt
And seems to be asleep,
Still, somehow, she is able
Her vigil for to keep.

A horse goes up the alley,
Some half a block away,
And she awakens with a bound
And wants to be away.

I rise and open up the door,
Then she’s gone in a flash,
And off across the yard she tears,
Like a sprinter in a dash.

By the time she gets to the fence,
The horse has long been gone,
So she just barks a time or two
And comes back on the run.

She stands there looking through
The door, and says, come let me in.
Next may come a dog or bird
And she is off again.

A dog’s life is a hard life,
Huge enemies she must face,
As she tries to do her duty
And protect the old home place.