A Poet in the Wilderness

Drum Hadley’s
Voice of the Borderlands
by Randy Garsee

“Wash me along the rims of arroyo rocks,
Carry the dust, carry the sands,
Carry these words, my seeds,
Down these blue desert valleys, away.”

I had to travel deep into southern Arizona, to the very edge of the borderlands of New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico, before I could introduce you to a man who is many things: a conservationist, a cowboy and a writer of the land he loves.
He no longer pens up cattle. Now he pens the prose and poetry of a vanishing way of life.
When we begin our interview, Drum Hadley sits in a metal patio chair, sets his well-worn, white felt cowboy hat on the table and sips a cool glass of water.
I ask him if he would mind reading some of this poetry aloud. I offer to retrieve a copy of his book, “Voice of the Borderlands.” His smile beams past his graying beard and his eyes twinkle. He doesn’t need the book, he tells me, and he begins to recite from memory as well as from his heart:

“Old earth, we are gathering these borderlands together,
Mesas, arroyos and valleys, as far as the eye can see.”

Now in his sixties, Drum Hadley spends more time roping words than cattle. Before our interview, I pull out a video camera and he pulls out a rope. It’s a riata, a rope made of cowhide. He spins it overhead, a cowboy’s halo, and easily snatches a couple of ancient fenceposts.
Next, he directs me into a dusty barn where spider webs cling to old saddles like strings of memories.
He taps a saddle horn with a rough hand. “I did team roping on this,” he says.
I ask him, “How can a cowboy write if he’s on a horse?”
As a rider of horses and a writer of books, Hadley shows me how, in a pinch, he can combine the two. He reaches for a pair of chaps and holds them out. “A bullet can write on chaps, because a lead bullet is like a lead pencil.”
Hadley lives far away from everything. We are deep in the borderlands. Mexico is a gunshot away. This is where Drum Hadley gets his inspiration. This is where he makes his home. Life here is reflected in “Voice of the Borderlands.” It’s a poetry collection combining numerous issues, from the environment to drug smuggling on the border.
I ask him what he hopes people get from his work.
He leans back in the metal chair and adjusts his glasses. “I wanted to give people the gift of laughter and the gift of sadness,” he explains, “and I wanted to carry them and to carry their hopes away.”
It’s something he accomplishes in many poems, including these lines about a man searching for work.

“Always the way is before me, Juan said.
Only the tips of my feet know where I will go.”