Past Dalhart

Dan Williams

August 1, 2021

Way out there somewhere, west past

Dalhart, there’s only earth and sky,

the immensity of space, seemingly

limitless this openness, this emptiness

filled with life, and all are dwarfed by 

faraway horizons that stretch beyond, 

beckoning to follow, unbending roads 

disappear in distance, haze the only 

limit, colossal cumulonimbus clouds rise 

twenty, thirty thousand feet into thinnest, 

breathless air, and below grain silos 

the highest human offering.  Out there, 

in endless expanse, there’s healing there.

Dan Williams is the Director of TCU Press and the TCU Honors Professor of Humanities. His second collection of poems, At the Gate, A Refuge of Sunflowers and Milkweed, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press.