poetry
Reba Cross Seals and Larry D. Thomas
Timeless Treasure
Pretty bits of colored glass
half hidden under the mesquite,
Turned purple by the sun
and a hundred years.
Hikers exclaim at their find,
touching smoothness of old cut glass,
Examining patterns that still show
even though half-buried in hot sand.
Could this design be part of a thistle, he said.
And is this one a rose?
Here, this one, said she, must have been a bowl
with perfect teardrop beading on the rim.
The purple glass fragments were added
to loaded pockets
As hikers also gathered pretty rocks,
and hurried on.
The only tears from the pioneer woman
who had broken her wedding bowl
Came from the damp spot leaking
from the hiker’s pocket.
by Reba Cross Seals
Cactus Lady
(Valentine, Far West Texas)
We drove down a dirt road, a block or two
off the only highway going through the hamlet.
Years before, the desert had taken up residence
in the old house we stopped in front of, its yard
overgrown with cholla and purple prickly pear.
God knows what the stooped elderly neighbor
thought when she saw me open my car’s trunk,
take out the skulls of ram and steer,
and place them on the posts of the barbed-wire fence
as my wife was setting up the tripod.
She appeared out of nowhere, inconspicuous
as a creosote bush. Holding her sawed-off shotgun
with its barrel angled toward the dirt,
she asked what the dickens we were up to,
and blurted, “You're trespassin', ya know.”
“Taking photos for the cover of a poetry book,”
I stammered. When I offered to mail her a copy
of the published book, she thought for a minute
and muttered, “Guess so.” She gave her address
as “Cactus Lady, General Delivery, Valentine, Texas.”
Said that’s all I needed to put on the envelope.
She then stretched the hem of her well-worn T-shirt,
lifted it a little from her body, and grinned,
as she flashed in bold letters, “Valentine Pirates,”
the mascot of the eight-student local high school.
by Larry D. Thomas
14
Cenizo
Third Quarter 2017