At the Museum of South Texas History
Jan Seale
March 19, 2023
Step into the main gallery, second floor:
a mammoth from the Pliocene epoch
trumpets silent welcome, and overhead
an ichthyosaurus churns the Paleo-Gulf.
Move to the diorama: smooth Coahuiltecans
bring a wild turkey back to camp
while cicadas chirp and a cougar growls.
These humans are carefully not leaving
a written record, only shell fragments,
chipped stone flakes, campfire hearths.
Next, Spaniards in helmets and chain mail
lead horses through the thorn scrub forest,
trample the prickly pear cactus.
Now civilization commences near fresh water,
with colonists hanging church bells,
electing alcaldes, plowing the fields.
In a narrow jacal, an Aztec descendant
sings quietly, tells a mythical tale of a lover.
A rattlesnake menaces, a cook brews
coffee from mesquite beans. Across,
an entrepreneur checks his steamboat
for passage on the Rio Grande.
Meanwhile, downstairs the greeter
readies the computer, the cash box,
the visitor bracelets. The building
supervisor flings open oak doors,
lets in sunlight for a brief air-out.
The gift store lights flash on.
A bobcat strolls in.
(This museum is not in the suburbs.
This museum is no kitschy tourist attraction.
MOSTH boasts a board, a website,
an archive, national listing; has won prizes,
is solvent, imposing, sits on the square
opposite the county courthouse.)
The bobcat steps lively, bringing
a lovely buff color, with spots,
long legs, fuzzed feet, facial ruffs, ear tufts,
gleaming eyes, porcelain pink nose,
and, topping it off, a short curled-up tail—
all these declare it is not Tabby Americana.
The bobcat looks about, startled at shrieks
and running feet. Perhaps it is wondering
where water is, where chipmunks, where snakes.
It turns, and on retractable claws moves quietly
from the stone tiles of the entry foyer to
the gift store.
Full of purpose, it heads straight
for the book display, (ahh, our kind of cat!)
climbing shelf by shelf to the top, turning,
checking its vantage, settling in a corner.
Was it once an Egyptian cat on a tomb?
Exhibit A licks its paws, takes a spit bath
after the long journey to town. Then settles.
Here we see a learned cat, a scholarly feline,
an educated carnivorous mammal,
a book lover cat having chosen to preside over
The Amazing Life of a South Texas Cowboy,
The Rio Grande Delta and I’d Rather Sleep in Texas.
In true reverence to the region’s biome,
the police are not called, only Animal Control.
These folks, delighted, relieved of boring stray dogs,
do a careful takedown, feline to opossum cage.
Upcountry, “Hello,” yells the rancher into his phone,
“A WHAT you say?” He knows all about MOSTH,
believes in heritage, history, this peculiar land.
So he gets in his pickup, drives an hour into town,
stomps into the museum, kneels and looks
into shining yellow eyes.
“Well hello hello, Betty Bobcat,” he croons.
With a name, she’s taken up, walked to the door.
She’s over the side of his pickup;
she’s off to home on his range.
So much for show-and-tell, for a live demonstration.
So much for not-musty, not-dead museum displays.
Here’s to living history. Yowl! Pssttt!
credit to Museum of South Texas History
Jan Seale is the 2012 Texas Poet Laureate. She lives in South Texas, on the U.S.-Mexican border. Her garden is full of succulents which grow rich and beautiful with hardly any tender loving care.
