Coming into Castroville
Vincent Hostak
March 10, 2024
In the 1840’s, the “Republic of Texas” was in debt and sought aid, even from Europe. In 1842, a French banker, Henri Castro, paid to settle a colony west of San Antonio. He relocated families from the French province of Alsace to the town, each attracted by rumors of greater freedom in Castroville.
The whirring through a failing rubber seal
on the passenger window of our old Toyota
is the road whispering the old meanings of things:
This is not the Pan-American Highway,
those are not freight liners headed for Kansas.
It is the Shawnee Trail to Sedalia,
those clay-dusted cattle, their wildness has been nearly erased.
It is the Camino Real,
those are the Spanish chasing away the French.
This is the trail of the Coahuiltecan from the south,
gasping as they vanish along with their old names.
Coming into Castroville from San Antonio,
you listen for the old meanings of things,
knowing there is always something older to be heard,
like, this is not Texas, it is Little Alsace,
that is not a house, it’s a half-timbered haus.
This haus wears a wood frame on its plaster sleeve,
flanked in the patterns that Roman roads make,
like those over the Field of Mars,
diamond-shaped boundaries that divided
a world once named Everything,
that belonged to Everyone.
Many roads lead to confusion.
So, we stop to eat and drink.
Our forks heavy with Coq au Vin,
we take too many sips of Gewürztraminer,
not sweet, which is to say not German,
not dry, which is to say not French.
We are drawn to the flow of the Medina River
to watch a Green Kingfisher, fixed to a limestone cay,
scanning for lunch in rapids below a bald cypress.
We are drawn to make a late day’s harvest of sleep,
to dream a parade of the old meanings of things.
Vincent Hostak is a poet, essayist, and media producer. He’s held long-time residences in Austin and Colorado, where he’s also worked in documentary and network television/film production. His poetry may be found in the print journals Sonder Midwest (#5)/Illinois, The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and the 2022/2023 anthology Lone Star Poetry: Championing Texas Verse, Community and Hunger Relief. He is currently appointed to the 2024 editorial team at Asymptote, an international journal dedicated to the art of English language translations of contemporary world literature. He’s a two-time Summer Scholar at Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, directed by Anne Waldman.
