Poetry
I Ride an Old Paint
for Patsy and the horses we have known
Desert Epitaphs
The Bar
(just outside Terlingua, Texas)
for Jeff Alfier
Its crumbling adobe facade
was baking in the glare
of hot, late afternoon sunlight.
We eased through the doorcase
decades doorless, expecting
to find nothing but trash
and debris. To our great surprise,
the dirt floor and roofless interior
was pristine, furnished with a table,
four chairs, and the still recognizable
remnants of a small, wooden bar.
The legs of the four chairs
were dried-mud-caked to the floor,
still sporting flakes of red, yellow,
blue, and green paint bleached
as the eyes of the local who,
a few miles back in Terlingua,
served us cold ale and stout.
We sat at the table, raised
ghost mugs to a sky-roof
bluer than human longing,
and clinked them softly in a toast.
As we swilled our cold,
phantom beverages, we watched
the desert shadows lengthen,
blacker than thick crankcase oil
years beyond the remotest
possibility of changing.
You can drop off my soul at the world’s edge:
so it can find its place along the way
spirits travel, where celestial winds play
songs of release, instead of life’s dirge.
Or write my name in sand; let the winds blow
the grains across the flats, buttes, and mesas
that comprise this land, as though the winds know
this essence neither marks nor erases
our fleeting presence, a cryptic symbol
of having been, that desires to come again,
to never really disappear,
too filled with zest for existence
to accept death as the end.
Or let my bones and ashes nurture new
life, on top some peak, or down some canyon,
as a native tree, providing shade.
My spirit yearns to remain, to feel, view –
never fade,
never be done.
Nelson Sanger
Every weekend we’d go to Magee’s roping
arena, crossing the treacherous Loop 13 bridge
over the Katy railroad lines, often howling
with the Texas Eagle or freight trains
moving into San Antonio. Every kid
in the neighborhood – the Floyds, Pam Crank,
the Daniels girl, my sister Patsy,
and I – would ride our horses and watch
the old timers and the young practice roping
for hours until the sun set and we
could see no longer.
Once, Mr. Magee
let us take part. Oh, we couldn’t rope,
none of our horses were ropers, but he let
us go rip-roaring wild out the chute, our minds
filled with some imaginary steers in front
of us, our right arms twirling in the sky
as if we had a lasso, ready to loop over the steer,
and we would run to the end.
Everyone did it. Guy Floyd led off – he
was the oldest, the daring young man on his half-
Arabian black gelding. Then the girls,
my sister, Pam, Ann Floyd, Dixie
Daniels, then it was my turn.
I had a paint called Texas
because of the marking on his rump.
He was a touchy old horse. When we got
him, his feet had frozen from walking
on pavement too long, but we had nursed
him back to health. He never would carry
two, though. Whenever we tried to ride
double, he would pitch. I could hang on.
This time as I backed
him into the chute, my mind full of steer,
and Mr. Magee dropped the flag. I heeled
him in the flanks, and Texas shot
from the chute, into the air, a bucking
bronco, and we bounced and jolted
and twisted and turned
across the arena. I hung on. The old guys
rang their Stetsons in the air,
whooped and hollered. My friends
yelled “ride ‘em, cowboy,” and I did
until we settled down and Texas trotted
from the arena, head up, eyes ablaze
with his wild West rodeo ride.
Larry Thomas
Clarance Wolfshohl
26
Cenizo
First Quarter 2013