Old Harrisburg

Suzanne Morris

March 31, 2024

The once bustling town,

seat of the

Republic of Texas

leaves a dusty footprint in

the WPA American Guide Series–

Houston edition–

which is how I first

became aware of Harrisburg

as a place distinct

from its surroundings

even though I had spent

my childhood Sundays

in the pews of

Holy Cross Episcopal

nearby the railroad tracks

on Medina Street,

had passed by the

ghostly double galleries

of the once grand Milby house

gone to seed on Broadway,

and stolen nervous glances

toward Glendale Cemetery

where vandals crept among

the moss-bearded oaks

to spray paint the

monuments of

once-prominent

families.

By then the name Harrisburg

survived as a

boulevard running through

East End

in the hulking shadow

of the Houston Ship Channel

rather than the center of commerce

at the juncture of

Buffalo and Bray’s bayous

dreamed into being by its founders

a decade before the  town

that would one day overtake it,

as Houston, fluffed up with

moxie and swagger,

seems to eventually overtake

everything lying

just beyond its reach.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist with eight published works, and a poet.  Her poems have appeared in The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and other online journals and anthologies.  A native of Houston, Ms. Morris now resides in Cherokee County, Texas.