Dang Me

Alan Berecka

April 28, 2024

To paraphrase the great American bard

Roger Miller, Texas politics swings

like a pendulum do. Republicans

in the statehouse two by two.

The few of us who still vote blue

huddle and mutter, remember

the glory days of Lady Bird and LBJ

when weathervanes like Rick Perry

painted their faces blue like Braveheart

in battle to have a chance to survive.

We say to each other, the pendulum

has got to swing back some day,

but it keeps swinging harder

to the right, blasting through 

practical pandemic protocols, 

through reproductive rights, 

through the lives of trans kids

and gay neighbors, out towards 

guns in vending machines,

so far out the bob has vanished

and may have lost its chain

never to return, leaving us

liberals with the faintest hope

couched in country wisdom:

Texas politics swings

like a pendulum do,

don’t it?

Alan Berecka is a retired librarian who currently lives in Sinton, Texas. His poems have appeared in journals such as the Red River Review, Ruminate, The Christian Century and Texas Review. He has published six books of poetry, the latest is Atlas Sighs: Selected and New Poems, Turning Plow Press, 2024.