A Summer Job

 Jesse Doiron

August 27, 2023

The Caddo called it “Nachawi,”

but everyone I knew

just said it was “the river.”

We plied it every Tuesday

all of summer ’69 –

I and Johanne Wiedenhoff. 

He had escaped the Nazis. 

I had escaped the draft. 

River never could escape.

We sampled up and down

 the waterway – at discharge 

terminals of sludge.

Broken eggs along the banks, 

‘gators, gar, and nutria, 

Cajuns in the shallows.

The river’s smell was pungent, 

tasting of petroleum, 

burnt methanol, and benzene.

Our bottles of gray water – 

corked and labeled, sent to lab – 

called the Neches dead. 

Jesse Doiron has worked in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia as an educator and consultant. His teaching experience ranges from English for international business at the UC – Berkeley Extension in San Francisco to creative writing at the Mark Stiles Maximum Security Prison for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The River in Exile

Vincent Hostak

July 30, 2023

-for Mark

“You could drink the truth in its purity if you went to the source” - John Graves

From the window seat of the plane

I drop a metaphoric pin

piercing the elbow of the river’s great arm.

I’m trying to recall its uncertain name.

The Brazos, that’s it, I think,

is winding west of Sugar Land.

The moment that clouds appear,

I cannot see its artful coils, yet

know these vapors are the River in Exile

at sixty-five hundred feet.

A name should flow from lips to ears,

then ears to lips, then to ears again.

Recorded upon parchment, alone,

their truest memory is lost.

Names are appropriated by

tongues and pens of sons of mothers

from other lands, while 

the first names spoken are exiled:

Tonkonohono, Kanahatino

Nearly half a millennia ago a colonist declared:

“This is as Colorado, ruddy and red.

These are as the Arms of God, Brazos de Dios,”

then confused these on the map they made.

What I view below is the one

where wine-dark sediments flow. 

The canon erases the spoken names,

but the river declines any myth of order

whether on paper, deeds or with dams.

To survey a thing is not to know it.

For that one must walk alongside it,

trouble its wild and dangerous bends,

stir its swollen backwaters with oars,

learn its talent to spawn an oxbow lake

where you can rinse duckweed off your shoes.

You must notice the way its regiments 

spill into a quiet invasion of an orchard

while the greater of it ranks course on.

You must skim the topwater with 

your hands, poke at the fruitful floor, 

scry into its baffling depths for cues.

You must also tip the canoe,

lose your way often,

but still know you are home.

You must swim sometimes to safety,

grasping the ropey vines at its banks.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.

River of Grief

Cathy Hailey

July 2, 2023

I.

In Uvalde County, Texas, the Leona River 

rises north, flows eighty-three miles.

For decades, irrigation carried its water to local farms,

until it overflowed in 1894, 

destroying a railroad bridge, bringing ruin to farms.

Drought in the 1950s dried it up, 

exposing remnants of indigenous peoples.

The Leona rose again. 

Did you know, even inland rivers 

can be influenced by the moon? 

Scientists call it semidiurnal oscillation,

cite the Leona as evidence,

tides rising and falling, twice each day.

II.

Longing runs long like a river,

levels rising one day,

diminishing the next.

The ache doesn’t go away.

The river traveling to the heart ebbs and flows,

an inner pressure rising until a dam breaks,

releasing a torrent as each new death occurs, 

especially the death of a child. 

III.

Today, my river spills over

as I hear parents mourn fourth-grade children:

a girl who painted herself with blood 

after reaching a hand 

into her friend’s gunshot wound,

playing dead to survive,

another identified by her green Converse high tops, 

decorated in ink, a heart on the toe.

I hear shrieks and screams of parents 

desperate to save children, to know their fate,

only to be fought off by police.

IV.

When a mother and daughter 

arrive in Uvalde from Houston,

I feel my river overflow:

arteries, capillaries tightening, heartache increasing.

They drove four hours

to place flowers and a stuffed animal 

beside nineteen crosses for children, 

two for teachers.

They knew no one in Uvalde

but understood the devastation of burying a child,

only three years since their loss:

son and brother gunned down by a girlfriend.

How do you heal? journalists asked,

You never heal, the younger admitted. 

I still feel the pain every single day.

V

When raindrops or skipped rocks hit still river water,

when geese or ducks poke beaks in glass,

immersing heads to catch insects, fish, 

undulation forms a ring that ripples 

into circles, concentric, 

each one larger than the last. 

For parents of victims, loss is exponential, 

each new death magnifying memory

(I lost a daughter. too.  It doesn’t matter how.)

and I return to the river at the moment of disruption, 

the crest of catastrophe when the darkness 

of moonless night first enveloped me,

river waters rippling eternal influence on my river’s course.

VI.

The river of grief is long and unpredictable.

Sometimes I’m in an innertube floating on a lazy river,

a necessary slowdown to process, 

to reflect, to allow myself to breathe.

When the tides turn, grief is more like the Leona, 

its flood,

its drought,

even for the faithful.

Cathy Hailey teaches in John Hopkins University’s MA in Teaching Writing program and previously taught high school English and Creative Writing. She is the Northern Region VP of The Poetry Society of Virginia and organizes In the Company of Laureates. Her chapbook, I’d Rather Be a Hyacinth, was published by Finishing Line Press.

The Epic Battle for the Trinity

Alan Steelman

June 25, 2023

Epic the dream

Epic the battle

This special river, Las Santisima Trinidad

The Holy Trinity

Rivers of the Lone Star 

Exploring and evangelizing 

The early Spaniards 

Navigating and naming 

The Brazos, Colorado, Neches, Nueces, 

San Jacinto, Pecos, Sabine, Guadalupe, 

San Antonio, and the Rio Grande

Headwaters north for some, some wending east, others west

They christened one

Flowing from the north, almost from the border

Meandering through oxbows and bends, seven hundred miles  

All the way to the Gulf

Those who followed, 

Early pioneers, city fathers

Men of drive, ambition and vision

Adopt a mission

The Trinity River is ours now

“We’ll make this one the best”  

Make it a canal

For four score and seven

Dreams of ports, steamboats, barges

Keep the dirt flying, grow, grow, be large

From Dallas, streaming through virgin forest, verdant pastures 

Trails, woodlands, The Big Thicket

Replete with songbirds, hawks, thrushes

Elms, oaks, pecans, Texas Buckeyes

All this, secondary to the port city dream

Then decades pass, region evolves

Technology, banking, finance

Airplanes and Interstates

Earth Day, new forces at play

Concern about all things green

The “fathers,” for generations ruling from the top

Face now an existential threat 

A coalition not seen before or since

Gives voice to the question and the choice 

Industry with mills, refineries, pollution?

Or a different solution 

This Trinity, and its flow

Christened as special so long ago

Not to be disturbed with concrete, dams and levees

Our voice shall prevail, the people spoke

A resounding no, a death blow

To this old dream, now obsolete, outdated

May this special stream flow ever free to the Gulf

See the related article on The Dallas Seaport vote 50 years later.

Alan Steelman is a best-selling author, a poet, a former member of the U.S. Congress, and a former Member of the White House Staff. He has been a Chairman of the Dallas Council on World Affairs, is a graduate of Baylor University, holds a Master’s Degree from SMU, and was a resident fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University.

The Man Who Loved the Bayou

Kathryn Jones

June 18, 2023

“There’s something about a river

that sets a man to dreaming,” said the man

who found his soulmate in Buffalo Bayou. 

Don’s oar stroked the water, spinning tiny whirlpools.

He pointed out a Ruby-spotted Damselfly clinging

to a bush. Floods had left bits of plastic bags

in the tops of trees. They looked transformed, 

translucent like the damselfly’s delicate wings.

We floated by homeless men living under a bridge,

the manicured grounds of River Oaks Country Club,

the woodlands of Memorial Park, and Rainbow Lodge,

where people dined on rainbow trout with lump crab

at the top of terraced steps. A red-slider turtle sunned 

on the bank while a Great Blue Heron waded in shallows.

Bubbles from a submerged alligator floated to the surface.

“Oh, there you are,” Don said as if speaking to a friend. 

Concrete pylons of Loop 610 loomed overhead;

we floated between them. Serenity can exist in 

the most unlikely places, even under Houston’s freeways. 

Don had paddled on waterways around the world, 

but this one belonged to him. He worked hard to preserve

the bayou, taking people on canoe trips to show its natural beauty.

Everybody is trying to get away to someplace, he told me,

and what they’re trying to get away to is right here. 

Don died several years ago. Friends sprinkled his ashes

along Buffalo Bayou so he can paddle on without a canoe.

I treasure the long conversation we had about Texas rivers 

and why they must be saved from pollution, development,

and especially, apathy. “We need rivers,” Don said. 

“The rivers need us.” Whenever I drive over a bridge now 

and glimpse a ribbon of water, I wonder who is down there, 

floating, fishing, dreaming while damselflies alight on delicate wings. 

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas. Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.

Goddess of the Pedernales

Kathryn Jones

June 11, 2023

boulders crashed into the chasm

long ago when no one heard the echo

splash (splash)

rock chiseled smooth and white

round like the marble breasts

on the statue that fell off the edge

no one heard her voiceless scream

she lies now in the river

face to the sky, silent and still

as water rushes

over her terraced bones

wind and rain are her lovers

creating, destroying

caressing, eroding

stone pounded to sand

she is not one rock but many

married to green water

staring up at sun, moon, and stars

spinning fire, ice, and illusion

she gathers the days and nights

holding time in her outstretched hand

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas. Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.

Walking the Paluxy River in Drought

Kathryn Jones

June 4, 2023

In summer I like to walk upstream on the Paluxy

to see its dry riverbed gleaming white in the sun,

limestone wavy from millennia of flowing water. 

If I keep walking, I will spot them: records scattered

of those that came before me 113 million years ago

when giants walked on the edge of an ancient ocean. 

In wet years, the triangular tracks made by

a three-toed dinosaur called Acrocanthosaurus

lie beneath the Paluxy’s shallow waters, barely visible. 

In dry years, the tracks hold water like puddles, then 

the water evaporates, revealing toes and claws captured

in motion -- right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. 

Other Texas rivers depend on water for their power,

but drought transforms the Paluxy from insignificant to epic,

exposing its natural history museum under a vast roof of sky. 

As I walk the dry streambed, I try to envision 

fifteen-foot-tall, seven-ton creatures trudging here, 

their size and weight sinking tracks deep in mud. 

A shallow pool beckons me to remove my shoes,  

feel cool mud squish between my toes. I walk onward,

leaving no impression, no record that I was ever there. 

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas. Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.

Journey

Chuck Taylor

May 28, 2023

A small snake, mostly black

but with a thin stripe of

yellow, drifted by my

shoulder as I soaked in

the San Marcos River. 

It was growing dark and

the tree gods whispered in

the breezes from both shores.

We never go in the

river after it storms. 

Too much junk washes off

nearby parking lots. I

was being careful. Six 

weeks ago I'd endured

open heart surgery. 

The spring water was cold. 

I thought to warn my friends

downstream. I didn't. No

need to hurt a friendly

snake on its own journey.

Note: This poem was written in syllabic verse of 6 syllables per line, with 4 stanzas 5 lines each. It is influenced by English translations of classical Chinese and Japanese verse.

Chuck Taylor's latest novel is "Hamlet Versus Shakespeare." He taught Shakespeare at Angelo State University. The novel turns the tragedy of Hamlet into an adventure and comedy. Taylor is retired from wandering and teaching and spends his time with books, friends, family, manuscripts, a dog, and household repairs.

Neches

John Rutherford

May 21, 2023

The rotting boards jut from the bottom,

burned out, abandoned dock works,

left behind like cracked teeth.

The water never loses its oil-slick

sheen, purple and green above

forty feet of freshwater draft.

The life remains, though,

little plovers darting through

for leftover bait at the boat launch.

Downriver, Eagle Parana rises

As her cargo is offloaded,

her anchor lines rust-marked. 

Black crude fills an 18-wheeler,

soon upriver to Jefferson

and refined to red diesel.

This little ditch,

little-known artery of the world,

industry on both sides.

John Rutherford is a poet writing in Beaumont, Texas. Since 2018, he has been an employee in the Department of English at Lamar University.

Headwaters

Chris Ellery

May 14, 2023

In all the years I lived 

in San Marcos

I never went to see

the famous swimming pig

through the glass-bottom boat

at Aquarina Springs.

But often on summer Saturdays

I would snorkel below the falls,

headwaters of the San Marcos River.

Up from the Edwards Aquifer

through 2000 springs,

the water defines clarity.

Don’t get trapped under the falls,

they warned me, 

but the pressure and the motion

pushes away all trace of sediment

to carve a bright fantastic world

of stone washed by eons.

Sometimes I let the river wash 

my porcine flesh

like a lazy fish downstream

and I would float and swim

in a slow and shady pool, 

stirring the silt with my flippers

and peering into crevices

along the shore, habitat

of the Texas blind salamander.

Really I was just a little creature

made of water and dust, 

awash with delight

in the deepest, purest love of earth, 

seeing 

at that moment

everything there was to see around me

and nothing at all behind me

or ahead.

Chris Ellery is the author of Canticles of the Body and four other poetry collections. Contact him at ellerychris10@gmail.com. 

Remembering Another Riverwalk

Milton Jordan

May 7, 2023

Our not so large river winds down out 

of low hills beneath the high arched bridge 

toward its delta to spread rusty clay color

over the bay bearing the river’s name

and fades around the island’s end adding

little color to the Gulf’s foaming breakers.

A graying boardwalk heads upriver from 

the bayshore where we walked cooler evenings

after our early supper, before

the local classics station broadcast

their nightly symphony or some nights

nocturnes and a round of chorales. 

Milton Jordan and Anne live now along the San Gabriel in Central Texas. Earlier they lived along East Texas Rivers near the Gulf. 

Trinity / Arkikosa

Michael Helsem

April 30, 2023

River unnavigable

Except by rafts

Fetid dumping ground

Swollen to the level of the bridges

After torrential rain

Ev’ry summer dry

M. H. was born in Dallas in 1958. Shortly thereafter, fish fell from the sky.

The Music of the Brazos

Thomas Hemminger

April 23, 2023

Our troop went camping

on the banks of the Brazos. 

Palo Pinto in a fresh October 

is still comfortably warm. 

My son and I pitched our tent

on an overlook, safely clear of the water’s edge

but with panoramic appreciation of its beauty. 

The river meandered below our door

like a silver staff of music being 

written and sung by a chorus of creation

too mighty for us to perceive all at once.

One by one, we picked out the players.

We heard river bass 

splashing around their common pools,

caught the drone of dragonflies 

crisscrossing over the watery ripples,

and sensed the rhythm of frogs along the rocks, 

playing the protagonists in their own plots.  

At night a slinking, sly, villainous cottonmouth had his solo 

as he slithered along in the spotlight

of our lamp, seeking something to snatch.

A million stars shimmered over our concert, 

their constellations like statuesque balustrades 

circling higher and higher in our endless music hall.

Our dreams were an enchanted intermission 

in this ancient song. 

In the morning, those melodies still swirled around us 

while we cooked, then sauntered around, and 

as we finally broke our camp. 

When the curtain came down on our stay,

we were thankful for the river.

That exact performance

will not be heard again,

but is ours to treasure forever.

Thomas Hemminger is an elementary music teacher living in Dallas, Texas. His personal hero is Mr. Fred Rogers, the creator of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. It was through America’s favorite “neighbor” that Thomas learned of the importance of loving others, and of giving them their own space and grace to grow.