Baxter Black met his first cow in third grade. "I had to milk her."

Black's father was "a college professor and a part-time farmer, but he made sure his kids had experience with horses and cows."

Who knew then that cows would play such a part in Black's life? He not only grew up to be a veterinarian, but his interest in cows and the cow-related way of life has turned him into one of the country's most famous cowboy poets.

"I look at it this way," Black said by phone from his ranch in Arizona, "cows are the backdrop of all Westerns. They are the McGuffin — that was a term used by Alfred Hitchcock to describe the thing that the story is centered around but is there only to give people something to do: chase it, steal it, try to find out what it is.

"The backdrop to all Westerns was the cows — the ranch that was going to be taken by the evil banker, the rustlers who were trying to steal them, the cattle drive. I lump myself in with the cows. I just talk about the things that have always been there."

He does it with humor and poignancy and feeling, earning fans all across the country. "I started out writing songs, because everybody thinks they can be a songwriter. And I'd tell stories. Then I realized it was the poetry that had the magic, and I just started putting the stories into verse.

"Poetry is permanent. You tell a joke and it keeps changing. You write poetry and you don't just write words, you weld them in place. People can memorize them and recite them and they are immortalized. If you're lucky, you make people laugh and you please them."

Black, obviously one of the lucky ones, will be bringing his brand of poetry and humor to this year's Western Legends Round-up in Kanab, where he will headline a list of entertainers that also includes Sons of the San Joaquin, Curly Musgrave, Belinda Gail, Duke Davis Band and Don Kennington.

He'll also be there for the Cowboy Poetry Rodeo, which is becoming recognized as one of the best cowboy-poet competitions in the country. "I was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time. For the first few years after I started writing poetry, I kept my veterinarian's license, thinking people would surely quit calling. But they never have. It's taken on a life of its own."

Black now spends a good deal of time traveling around the country performing at festivals and agriculture-related events, and he sees two major reasons for the increased popularity of cowboy poetry.