About Texas Now

It’s the grass that’s most surprising:

dead already in June. In April the rains came,

the flooding culverts, the baby turtles,

and Indian Paintbrushes that by now

have withered into something mean and red—

a woman unhappily married, a man

threatening to light himself on fire.

In the middle of every field wallows a stock tank,

cows lingering there, the banks too hard

for many green things to grow. My father

used to buy goldfish and set them loose

in those ponds. Two days would pass,

and almost every fish rose, white,

to the surface. A few always survived.

Visiting the fields some years ago

their deadness struck me more than usual.

You saw the pioneers trudging past, visionary,

and every memory hard as the earth resurged.

I thought about marriage failing, a dog crumpled

on the blacktop, and an abortion. I suppose

those events grow sadder with drought,

and yet it’s home I was thinking about.

This warm place I lived, the June months

that could kill the elderly in a power outage.

Everything is brown, yellow, brittle, but

the sky: open, blue, that color of hope,

of eternity, a heaven withholding rain,

the color of veins beneath your wrist.