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.
