Poetry | Short Fiction | Blogging | Photography
At the break of mean sea level Bathed in the lowest of light A stark totem of redemption Warns of a powerful undertow As those who swim well know
Photo: on the Jane Long Memorial Highway, TX 87, Bolivar Peninsula, TX. (CC-BY-SA) 2021, G. Paul Randall
Buildings and reflections from a stroll downtown on a Sunday morning.
under Texas skies
roadrunner, the coyote’s
after you, beep beep
seeing jackrabbits
come right into the campsite
I belch, they scatter
~
infrequent raindrops
one here, now one over there
almost like weather
~
everything is damp
mosquitoes buzz in my ear
happy misery
~
a persistent rain
the wiper blades tilt and swoon
no birding today
Out camping in the Texas Hill Country until next week. It is raining today. I’m parked by the ranger’s station to leach some wifi signal. Don’t let the world go crazy without me.
fledgling Blue Jay
seems bewildered to be
in the world, what
a peculiar urge
to leave the nest, without
a second thought
to do, and do and rest
in a place where
every moment is
a kind of birth canal
squeezing us out, into
the next, and for what
—to do our best
Young Blue Jay photographed June 28th, 2018, in Galveston, TX where they are said to be somewhat rare.
a kind of blue
sacred backroad quietude
on the strip, cattail and post oak
Texas dayjazz, blacktop and bluebonnets
frogbeat to the blackbird horn solos
improvising on a theme
in springtime
My mood to you may seem quite vile
But listen to me, stay a while
I’m nothing like that crocodile
A villain, though he wears a smile
(A pair of alligators at Anahuac National Wildlife Reserve, March 2018.)
A crew with weed-eaters, whining like
Perfectionists, lawn mowers taming the wild
A chainsaw loath to start, sputters
Undoing the hackneyed silence
Oh, prattle on about how great
Back in the day, the silence used to be
By the house cat’s vacated sun-trap
In the porches of our once-napping ears
in the North where
the beauty wears magnificent trees
and glacial rock sculptures
they still have to borrow sky
from Texas, Texas is nine parts sky
and blanketing above, that
cloud-boil, above the cities too
where the deer trails are paved
is not a place, not kept, not held, no vault
an Olympic tangle of mind and air
roads chalkline straight
tide pools French-curve shallow
horizon a dazzling shaft of lightsaber
and skylight so thick
you could build a house on it
and think about retiring
beads on a string
country road strung with cars
one hundred and eight
circumambulate
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