Poetry
San Vicente, Texas Terlingua Bones Booked Up at the Last Picture Show
The road,
but an etching now,
scribes the way still
to that dusty relic
locked against sunburned slopes. Ground the color
of bone holds
men and monsters The Royal is only a sign
with two standing walls.
No one saw the
Reptile swim
No one saw it
Settle dead to
The bottom of
That shallow sea blooms on the sidewalk
in front, talks about math
Dirt Devils whispering by
carry their cargo of grit and scorching wind,
affording bantam relief
from heat impossible to breathe.
Becoming the same
ground I walk on
Echoes of hard times,
happy families
and sad exodus
ring the stillness.
Urged by curiosity and imagination,
visions unlikely and distorted...abound.
Amused spirits
stooped and bent
from labors indescribable
and weathered as the crosses standing sentinel
over graves of citizens forgotten,
follow and touch,
living again...
if only for a moment.
Terlingua’s heyday
of mercurial
Life and death
Played out on
Boquillas dirt
holding crosses
marking bones
in this land of
fallen stone
Larry Millar
Heavy with nature’s offing,
trees of wild persimmons
await a hand...familiar
but lost to the irretrievable past,
to harvest their gift.
An energetic woman tends
planters overflowing with red
and school administration,
points out McMurtry’s
bookstore scattered in four
buildings around the square.
We have coffee at the Wildcat,
two stocky farmers joke
about their golf games
over Mexican omelets.
Out the plate glass window
Sonny and Duane toss a sack
of money like a football as they
play through the intersection,
wiry farmers and roughnecks
ask if they’d heard of tackling.
The waitress tells us Sam the Lion’s
Pool hall is next door. It’s now
a gift shop. She says the coach’s
house, where Sonny smiles
Broken glass,
once unclouded,
now waxes opaque and purple,
fashioning jewels
never to be worn.
for a moment, is really
over in Olney. At the corner
Wild river and stoic mountains,
blowing winds of heat and bitter cold,
scarring sands and rain unequalled,
mentors all,
urge this small scar to heal;
to return to the land.
Adobe melting,
iron rusting,
wood in decay,
SanVicente...good journey.
Sonny brushes back Billy’s hair,
and a real estate lady, who says
she is originally from Pennsylvania,
tells us about the theatrical
performance next weekend.
We browse through four stores
of books while a beat up Ford
pickup chugs around the square
wondering where the dust has gone.
The last thing we see is the Royal’s sign
Gary Cardwell
shrinking in the distance.
14
Clarence Wolfshohl
Cenizo
Fourth Quarter 2010