The Last Bastion

Alan Berecka

December 1, 2024

I listened to some talking heads

on satellite radio as I drove 

through the middle of nowhere, 

somewhere on a rural Texas highway

not far from Luling. Naysayers 

and nihilists opined on our fractured

nation, lamented the grand chasm 

that divides red from blue; even the host,

a normally glass-half-full kind of guy,

said he was losing faith in the adversaries’

ability to sit down and break bread together.

When a road sign cautioned

an intersection and stop sign

up ahead, I braked and waited

my turn at the four-way stop.

As the radio rambled on,

a hybrid Prius set off to the west,

then a pickup hauling hay

rumbled south, then a semi

began to grind through gears

from its starting place and headed

north, then I took my turn

moving on to the east, as a late model

sedan blowing smoke waited its turn, 

and I was warmed by a rising sun,

and thought I heard Hope faintly 

whisper, “All is not lost, yet.”

Alan Berecka resides with his wife Alice and an ornery rescue dog named Ophelia in Sinton, Texas  He retired in January from being a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, and is settling into a whole new level of contentment. His poetry has appeared in such places as American Literary Review, Texas Review, and The San Antonio Express. He has authored three chapbooks, and six full collections, the latest of which is Atlas Sighs from Turning Plow Press, 2024. A Living is not a Life: A Working Title (Black Spruce Press, Brooklyn, 2021) was a finalist in the Hoffer Awards. From 2017-2019 he served as the first poet laureate of Corpus Christi.