Texas Trails
Nature’s Holy Pews
Elizabeth N. Flores
October 6, 2024
There is no church that welcomes us.
But we discovered nature’s holy pews,
a tree log and a plank resting on
concrete blocks near Oso Bay.
Each pew comfortably seats five.
We reserve space for Rosa, a young mother,
who gently drapes her colorful rebozo
over her baby’s head to nurse
as soon as the softest, earliest sounds
of hunger are heard; and for Rosa’s mother,
the strong and mighty Ida,
who after her stroke must now use a cane,
which she recently decorated with glitter,
a bold show of acceptance.
Four sit nearby on lawn chairs
if they brought them,
which at times are unsteady.
Or on the ground which,
depending on the season,
can be hot and dry or cool and muddy.
We take turns leading in prayer.
After prayers, as we feast
on homemade taquitos
and H-E-B empanadas,
we watch birds fly and then land
in the bay in unison, almost choreographed,
as if they are gracing us
with a mid-morning performance.
Our Sunday ritual works just fine.
It softens the blow that there is
no church that welcomes us.
Elizabeth N. Flores, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, taught for over 40 years at Del Mar College and was the college’s first Mexican American Studies Program Coordinator. Her poems have appeared in the Texas Poetry Assignment, Corpus Christi Writers (2022 and 2023 editions) anthologies edited by William Mays, the Mays Publishing Literary Magazine, and the Windward Review.
Paleo Pavement
Lori Janick
May 12, 2024
I’ve noticed, of course,
the paw prints in the street
preserved where pavement
poured like lava long ago,
fifty years at least since
ground was broken,
trees felled, replaced
with lesser trees.
Now I see
there are leaves
lacing the concrete-
how remarkable
to have missed this
tiny trail of birds,
each toe finely etched,
destination unknown.
Were they looking
for lost homes, searching
for seeds beneath
the spreading gray?
Steps later, more prints—
raccoon perhaps, or possum?
Someone might know—
a century hence, others
might discover all this and more—
handprints in driveways,
children’s names traced
with sticks, remnants of lives
submerged in time
meaning nothing when
we at last are gone.
Lori Janick was a children's librarian for 33 years where she witnessed daily the power of words to shape our world. Her work has appeared in the Round Top Poetry Anthology and TPA. She now devotes her time to writing, gardening and reading poetry to her attentive dog.
Resonance
Vincent Hostak
March 3, 2024
I love to walk the vaulted banks of the old Dry Creek
along the ridge in skewed October light
pushing stones into the morning mud
where they can share a trace of my surprise:
a blissful weakening in my kneecaps
which often holds me steady through the day,
the momentary quickening of my pulse
as my soles sink into a sticky roux.
A prodding pressure hardened each stone slowly,
caused their cool indifference,
ground their hardened edges into curves,
and heaved them into my random route.
They’ll never know the crisp, electric moments
which move a soul toward wonderment,
nor the soft caress of mud around the feet.
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.
Happy Trails to You
Jeanie Sanders
February 25, 2024
I sit in my early 60s World dressed
in a black cowboy outfit with
my toy gun watching Dale and Roy
sing
“Happy Trails
to You.”
I am a young white child in a small
South Texas town
in my safe environment
and I am
Happy.
On the long trails of learning I haven’t
taken many
steps.
Much later in my life, on trails composed
of Sorrow,
I will learn
how to
Run.
Jeanie Sanders is a poet and collage artist. She lives in Lytle, Texas. Her poems have been published in The Texas Observer, San Antonio Express-News, Texas Poetry Calendar, Passager, La Voz de Esperanza, and several anthologies. She has two books of poetry, The Book of the Dead": Poems and Photographs and The Dispossessed.
Vanishing Point
Kathryn Jones
February 25, 2024
At what moment will the last one die?
The Golden-Cheeked Warbler every day loses
more habitat to chainsaws and bulldozers
but still trills in oak tree branches.
Sea turtles, Whooping Cranes, Monarch butterflies
teeter on the edge of oblivion but still
they migrate on epic sky trails, mate, lay eggs,
raise young, demonstrate their will to survive.
Where is the justice for their existence?
When the last one dies, if that day comes,
will anyone hear the thud or notice the silence?
Only the rivers and mountains and deserts listen and weep –
When a bird goes extinct, singing no more in forest cathedrals,
the butterfly floats to the ground, wings stiff as paper,
humans may glimpse their own vanishing point –
there on the horizon, where all trails converge and disappear.
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.
How Long
Suzanne Morris
February 18, 2024
I wonder how long before
the trails he cut through
the woods above the creek–
wide enough for
a two-seater buggy–
are overtaken by
thorny wild
blackberry vines and
tangles of honeysuckle
and muscadine,
and pine saplings mulched with
fallen leaves,
autumn’s age-old benediction.
I wonder how long before
all signs that he was here
have vanished
like his ashes we
scattered that April day
save for a few
intractable granules
carrying his DNA.
Suzanne Morris is a poet and novelist with eight published works. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and online journals, including The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, and Stone Poetry Quarterly. She resides in Cherokee County, Texas.
Cairns
Kathryn Jones
February 18, 2024
The trail leads us into the Chihuahuan Desert,
no signs except one marking the trailhead
and a warning: No water. No shade.
There are four of us, our backpacks heavy with water,
a topographical map and compass for navigation
through spiny agave and prickly pear.
Our hiking boots leave patterns in the sand,
blown away by the wind, erasing our presence.
With every step we blend into the desert.
The trail becomes invisible. We stop, consult the map.
Then we see them poking out of the scrubby brush:
stacks of gray and pink stones – cairns.
A Scottish tradition to mark graves, memories,
cairns mark the path for hikers on this trail in Big Bend,
posted like ancient guides silently pointing the way.
Our eyes scan the desert, searching for the next cairn,
but for more than that – guidance, grounding, calm.
Each step is an act of faith that we will not get lost.
Cairns mark human intrusion on the natural world;
some say knock them down, leave no trace, but they
are like prayer altars, leading us out into the wilderness.
The monolith we seek rises ahead like a sky cathedral,
an altar of wildness, a giant cairn marking the end of our trail,
the beginning of our journey away from the wired world.
Hot and parched, we pitch our tents in Elephant Tusk’s shadow,
find water flowing from a spring, purify it, find communion
in and with the desert, dip our entire being into its coolness.
Three days later we head out of the wilderness, restored.
We spot the cairns but this time we know the way back
even as the wind erases our footprints, leaving no trace.
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.
High on the Escarpment
Roberta Shellum Dohse
February 18, 2024
High on the escarpment far in the west
Long shadows stretch ‘neath the sun’s early rise,
Long shadows chase ‘cross the high vast plain
Where nothing breaks the horizon, not even a tree
To impede my vision as I drive further west.
Not a tree, no homes, no towns to be seen,
Only fences and gates, tall metal gates,
With name after name stretched over the top saying
All this is Mine, look as far as you can,
I have claimed it all and it is Mine.
I wonder at this need to close in space,
How much is lost as we shut ourselves off
From the freedom and music to move as the wind,
The wind that scours, whistles and moans
And drives exhilaration into the souls that know
How it must have been to be here before,
One with the bounteous lushness of life,
Wild prancing ponies, buffalo
Tall prairie grasses, coyote, and crow
And through all the swirling eddies of change
The pulse of the land continues to beat
Endless fences and gates and long dusty drives
Trailing off into nowhere cannot bury or drown
The music I hear as the sun dresses the land,
This high escarpment, in a gown of light.
Roberta Shellum Dohse hails primarily from California. After living on a farm in northern Minnesota and in Oregon, she moved to Texas in 1980, attended law school, and has practiced law in Corpus Christi since 1997. Formerly a flight instructor and a college professor, she has always loved to write.
Our Boys
Thomas Hemminger
February 11, 2024
We have a troop of boys.
They hike every trail they find.
They’ve hiked the flowing grasslands of North Texas,
the hilly woods of eastern Oklahoma,
and the high mountains near Taos, New Mexico.
They form up.
They count off.
“Hiking!” from the front.
“Hike on!” from the back.
We watch in awe as
they bear the weight of their packs,
walking sticks in hand.
Each one saunters along
pretty noisily at first.
Then, they settle into the journey
and march on quietly,
knowing the work is theirs to do.
With each bend in the trail,
with every difficulty met and mastered,
with every heavy breath
we see them grow before our eyes.
Where did my little boy go?
Who is this young man I see standing here
so resolute, so determined?
I thought this trail would be longer.
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.
Streamside Stretch II
Milton Jordan
February 7, 2024
Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.