Here are the words to a popular cowboy poem which is common at Cowboy gatherings. Don't know how well known it is outside the cowboy circle, but it has been performed by Riders in the Sky and Waddie Mitchell. The poem was written by Wally McRae, a Montana rancher.

REINCARNATION

What is reincarnation? The Cowpoke asked his friend
His pal replied it happens when your life has reached its end
They comb your hair and wash your neck and clean your fingernails
And lay you in a padded box away from life's travails
And the box then goes in a hole that's been dug in the ground
And reincarnation starts in when your're planted neath the mound
Then clods melt down, just like the box, and you who is inside
And then you're just beginning on your transformation ride
Meanwhile the grass will grow upon your rendered mound
And soon upon your lonely grave a single flower is found
And then a horse will wonder by and graze upon flower
That once was you and now become your vegetated bower
The posie that the horse done eat along with his other feed
Makes bone and fat and muscle essential to the steed
But some is left that he can't use and so it passes thru
And finally lays upon the ground this thing that once was you
And say by chance I wanders by, and sees this on the ground
And I ponders and wonders at this object that I've found
And I thinks of reincarnation and life and death and such
And I come away concluding you ain't changed all that much.