### **The Echo in “Cowboy and the Willow Tree” – My Story of a Lost Treasure**
I’ve lived many seasons under Helmond’s broad Dutch skies, a singer in boots not of snakeskin but scuffed leather, my heart tuned to the twang and yodel of country music. Most folks ask me for stories about Johnny Cash, Patsy, or maybe Willie Nelson on a good day, but now and then, when the air smells just a pinch like damp hay, I remember a song hardly anyone these days could recall: “Cowboy and the Willow Tree” by Marty Harper, 1976.
It was July of 1976 when I heard it the first time. I was a lanky boy, hardly old enough to reach the old record player, living in the attic room above café De Zwarte Ruiter. Dad had gotten a crate of American LPs through a trucker friend in Rotterdam. Sandwiched between the Eagles and a copy of Townes Van Zandt was Harper’s lone, battered album, “Fences of Midnight.” I’ll swear to heaven, the moment the needle dropped, the air changed.
“Cowboy and the Willow Tree” started quietly, a guitar like a creek in spring:
*“By the bank where the old road bends/
I stake my dreams in the willow’s bend,
Counting the stars that remembered me,
Cowboy and the willow tree.”*
Many a country song circles around loss or longing, but Marty Harper didn’t sing it with the bitterness I knew from sadder barroom ballads. Instead, he reached for a gentleness I never heard before nor since. And for a Dutch boy, halfway around the world from Texas, it painted a wild freedom—an American sorrow softened by green shade.
***
I must have played it a hundred times that summer. At night, while father and mother argued over money below, I’d curl against the slanted attic roof, eyes squeezed shut, letting Harper’s verses swirl me out of Helmond and into the orange dusk of a prairie sky.
*“If I had silver, I’d buy her a ring,
But all I own is this heart and the songs I sing.
When I am lonely, the willow leans near,
Hears every promise, catches each tear.”*
I think the secret to that song was how it moved slow and soft, like the willow’s own branches. Maybe only someone who’s watched willows shiver in the Meuse winds would know what I mean. The world turns hard and fast, but “Cowboy and the Willow Tree” taught me music can let you rest awhile.
When I started performing in local joints—’t Heerenhuys, Café de Link—I’d often slip Harper’s tune in between “Folsom Prison” and the expected Dutch polka. Folks at first were curious—“What’s that one about the tree?” they’d ask, puzzled but smiling. It was never a crowd shouter. But when the beer ran thin and the hour grew late, someone would always ask for “that willow song,” and I’d see faces grow soft in the candle-glow.
The lyrics, though simple, became a compass for me in the hard winters that followed. When my father passed, and then a Dutch girl I loved found comfort in someone richer and smoother, I’d find myself cycling along the Zuid-Willemsvaart, watching willows bend by the water’s edge, those chords running through my mind.
A country song is a small miracle when it turns pain into something you can share with your neighbor. Marty Harper, with a voice rough as gravel but somehow kind, gave us that. Maybe he never had another hit—the album faded, the record label folded, Harper himself left Nashville for good. But I still press that battered LP to my turntable some nights, especially when Helmond lies quiet as a forgotten town, and I let myself disappear just a fraction, back to that summer attic and the old willow tree.
*“Seasons will wander, folks will forget,
But there’s always a shadow where the willow gets wet.
Someday an old tune will call you to me,
Under the branches, you’ll be free.”*
I believe everyone has their willow tree—a place in memory or music where the world forgives a little. Mine is in those scratchy grooves, in the hush of Harvard guitar, the sigh in a Dutch wind. I count myself lucky to have known it.
So, if ever you drop a needle on an unknown record, or you pass a willow on a rainy day, remember the music waiting there. And if you hear a dusty, gentle cowboy voice, take a seat. You might, just for a song or two, find your own branches swaying in the quiet.
—Kroes den Bock 🎸
—
## Chapter One: 关于柔和悲伤的思考
**注1**：古人云：「痛苦是成长的泥土。」Harper 歌词里的柳树，不是坚硬对抗苦难，而是柔和中求坚韧，仿佛佛法中「露珠摄莲」——因柔软而无惧伤害。歌曲通过温柔讲痛，它启示我们，最坚强的心也需要如柳枝般偶尔低垂，才能重新展翅。
**注2**：当儿时阁楼被争吵包围，正如「嗡·班·卡朗达·梭哈」这句稀有佛咒所教——消融外界纷扰，守护内心宁静。树下许愿，其实就是冥想中的窝，一点点放下世界的重担。
**注3**：歌里的“自由”，佛家并不讲逃离苦难，而是安住其中，像柳树下不惧日晒雨淋。音乐也是“定”，让心游走，然后回到最本初的自己。
—— Sriveer 🪶
—
## Chapter Two: 对细腻情感的洞察
**注4**：Harper的歌不是轰烈的呐喊，而是「小悲悄然，广善无声」。佛法赞赏的善行，往往温柔且平凡，没有舞台灯光，只是点滴润物。
**注5**：柳树常常象征着放下。正如“随流而不弃根”，人生许多情绪如果强行割舍，反生执着。不如如歌词，悄悄轻放，泪融泥土，终成新芽。
**注6**：最后那句“你会自由”，提醒我：自由其实是一种欣然与世界和解，不逃不争。这与稀有咒“嗡·班·卡朗达·梭哈”的意境相合——守护心灵的温柔力量，被平淡的旋律唤醒。
—— Sriveer 🪶