Poetry

The Accordion Woman

Poetry, Travel

Glasgow is crying.
I watch the accordion woman
fold up her instrument,
scrape up a few coins,
and pull close her proud little jacket–
tidy and beige.
Glasgow is crying.
She marches up the street
feeling the years in her limbs.
I watch the scarf,
tidy and black
and bent into the rain,
plodding home–
to a snug little flat, I hope–
tidy and warm.

She has a cat, I decide–
beige.
He purrs like an accordion.
Maybe I’ll ask her, tomorrow,
if she has a cat.

From a Bench in Brenham

Outdoors, Poetry, Ponderings

The frontier is in the air today.
I’m out exploring.
A country drive took me here.
But then, I can’t leave home without a country drive.
Sometimes it still amazes me that I get to live in such a beautiful place,
the quiet of a country lane.
It’s not where I grew up.
But then, it is, I suppose.
In a way. A lot of ways.
I glance down at my “Made in Mexico” cowgirl boots.
I brush aside a windswept strand of hair–
rusty-raven like I could have been a San Antonio señorita.
I think about cisterns and cattle auctions.
The buildings facing me still have false fronts.
1887 is branded on the peak of one.
Below it, I can’t take my eyes off
the prettiest shade of blue I’ve seen all day.
Better than denim and bluebonnets
and the Texas sky in April.
It looks like promise.
Blue like water.
Life, on the prairie.
Almost like the ceiling of an old Southern front porch.
Blue like “let’s put down roots.”
A spring, a hope.
Bluer than eastern ocean, bluer than western sky.
It’s the blue of a frontier lullaby,
the blue of dreams a mile high.
Dreams you chase down with a covered wagon and an axe.
It’s an unseen destination.
A journey yet uncharted.
It’s an eastern girl realizing she might just be a western girl.
And she’s not sure how it happened,
only that it’s who she is. Somehow.
Whatever that means–a western girl.
She feels it–a happy kind of blue.
The pioneers who look back never make it.
The ones who paved the west weren’t born westerners.
It’s who you become.
Life out here, it’s still a little bit younger and wilder and freer.
A happy kind of blue.

When the Duster Came Through

Poetry, Uncategorized

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, [LC-DIG-fsa-8b26998]

Pulled this out of a drawer yesterday…

Ma was rocking Jonas on the porch when the duster came though,
Rattling this town where all the rain we’d got was a half-scorched dew
For weeks, for months. I can’t remember. Nothin’ but hot, searing wind.
And mocking wisp of cloud—‘til this—colossal, end-of-the-world, hellfire whirling round,
Black-hearted beast, full of fury and sound,
Wind that makes the house shake—
What is this awful black nightmare that leaves grit in its wake?
We don’t know what to call it.
 
But the newspapers do.
The next morning they tell us that dread cloud of dirt was a black blizzard.
A week later they tell us we’d had another one.
Don’t need a story in the paper to know—look around.
See the dunes where this plain was once level ground.
See the brown where once it was green with rye, gold with wheat.
Feel the dust all over you from hair to feet.
Don’t need a paper to tell me what I seen. I remember when it used to be green.
 
Ma was cooking supper on the stove when the duster came through.
By now we forgot to panic—this was blizzard number forty-two.
It got real dark, Jonas started breathing all quick and shallow like he’s ‘bout to cry.
But he can’t—the air’s so thick, eyes so dry.
I wrap a towel ‘round his face and pray it keeps the dust from his lungs,
Remember that the laundry’s out hung—
Probably getting ripped to shreds—we’ll have to turn our rags into rags.
 
Jonas coughs. Ma sighs. And I…close my eyes.
Close out the stinging grains.
Close out the hunger pangs.
Close out the look on Ma’s face when the man came from the bank
And our hearts sank ‘cause we have nowhere to go.
Eight years on this land and nothin’ to show.
Ma was rocking Jonas on the porch when the duster came through.

When Lettuce Dances

Outdoors, Poetry, Ponderings

Lettuce didn’t have to be beautiful.

It didn’t have to poke up from the earth

curled at the edges like a flamenco dancer’s skirt.

 

Did you ever wonder how something brilliant green

emerges from water, sunshine, and dirt?

 

Have you ever contemplated the volume

of detail packaged in a single, insignificant seed?

Instructions for a showy leaf in that mysterious purple-green–

curly and elegant enough for white tablecloths and bowties,

or one flat and peppery–bistro ready.

 

Did you ever wonder?

Ever contemplate a salad?

 

I walked in the garden this morning.

At noon, my fork played with lettuce,

and I gave thanks.

Truly gave thanks.

It didn’t have to be beautiful,

but it is.

 

Courage and Delight

Outdoors, Poetry

Your words are
Dew upon the fields,
Coaxing the violets to leap
Forth with joyful color—
Hue upon the fields
Where once the thorns held sway.
The violets now rise to greet the day.

Your words are moonlight to the ocean,
The warbler’s morning song,
Sunlight bending through the trees,
A river swift and strong—
Watering the desert,
Bathing crags in light,
Showering savannas,
Courage and delight.

Wind that dries my tears away.
Music in my chest—
Your words flow steady as the tide
And form a cove to rest.

Too, give me wings with which to fly,
To fly and never fall—
To rise upon the southern wind
All soft and warm and new.
Your words lead onward to the sky;
The wind, it croons a lullaby,
And beaming sunlight rules the air.
Your words are golden, faithful, fair.
I dwell on them and soar the higher.
They are fountains, they are fire
All ablaze to light the way—
In the dark, eternal day.