Letter From The Hill Country

Leaving Houston today we passed the giant mirror-plated

longhorn armadillo

on watch before a little refreshment establishment.

Houston, land of huge hospital erections and endless surgeries,

detumesced to country highway, feminine hills, heading back

towards Austin

and the cedars of Lago Vista.

Fragrance of kaliche clay soil and the cedars;

oaks in dancing pose, sight of does and fawns strolling shaded neighborhoods;

heat off the driveway at just past sundown;

Coming to rest at last, sharing fortune cookies with laughing friends

and a highly excitable parakeet...

Texas.

Where the sky at night IS big and bright,

and cowgirls occasionally lasso tornadoes

and take them out to dance.

Texas.

Where angels are taller than skyscrapers,

and scorpion babies ride on mama scorpion's tail

and ordinary armadillos sometimes end up

dead and baked in the highway heat -

 - in a field twelve vultures dance around a dying longhorn cow -

And where, in the hill country, out along the devil's backbone,

sometimes at night huge wild hogs wreck unwary motorcyclists.

Rattlers and roadrunners, tiny dragon chameleons and see-through geckos,

sticky-toed and upside down on the porch ceiling catching bugs -

Prickly pear yellow-bloomed and fertile...

Evening walk,

fading heat of the day,

fragrance of cedar and kaliche clay,

Oh, Texas.