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February Ramble
Friday, February 13, 2009 IV.2.2. Time for another ramble with "Here and Now." Here are our co-ramblers for the week. Friends of "Here and Now" Alice Folkart Christopher George Cliff Keller Joanna M. Weston From my library Joyce Carol Oates Sapphire Ghazia A. Algosaibi Gerald Barrax Kevin Young Anna Akhmatova Daisy Zamora And me.  First this week, I have three poems by Joyce Carol Oates from her book The Time Traveler published E.P. Dutton in 1989. Oates is best known for her novels and short stories, but she is a also a highly regarded essayist, critic, playwright and poet. Undefeated Heavyweight, 20 Years Old I Never been hurt! never knocked down! or staggered or stunned or made to know there's a blow to kill not his own! - therefore the soul glittering like jewels worn on the outside of the body. II A boy with a death's-head mask dealing hurt in an arc of six short inches. Unlike ours his flesh recalls its godhead, if dimly. Unlike us he knows he will live forever. The walloping sounds of his body blows are iron striking bone. the joy he promises is of a fist breaking bone. For whose soul is so bright, so burnished, so naked in display? All insult, says this death's-head - ancient, tribal, last week's on the street - is redeemed in the taste of another's blood. You don't know. But you know. How Delicately... How delicately the fish's backbone is being lifted out of its cooked flesh - the sinewy spine, near- translucent bones gently detached from the pink flesh - how delicately, with what love, there can be no hurt. Heat Late afternoon. Distant shouts... Young raw voices, male, floating in the heat. Are they angry, or bored, or is it the heat shout- ing through them? You forget where you've started from. Dull grinding of machines, grind- ing to a climax in red clayed earth beyond the woods. This is the season of small black inchworms that, when touched, curl at once into balls cunning as punctuation marks or the stone walks, but that won't save them.  Here's some more of my coffee shop rambling. where i go depends on where i start my poems are creatures of whatever i'm looking at when i start them that's why my Cafe Chiapas South Town poems are different form my Ruta Maya Riverwalk poems from my Olmos Perk parkside poems from my suburban La Taza poems from my corporate Borders poems it'0s all about environment and in past weeks the environment has changed Chiapas and Ruta Maya are closed, bleeding broken victims of economic stress and coffee-culture decline the Perk is always crowded and claustrophobic and La Taza is all the way on the other side of the city leaving Borders, but only for the few hours in the morning before the medical students pile in with their latinate study of pestilence and bloody viscera trying to make the best of the situation i find myself in, i decide to try an experiment - accustomed to sit at my table facing west i circumnavigate the table several time, seeking inspiration, then decide to move to the other side of the table, facing east i find no great inspiration eastward ho, just a Tanfastic storefront advertising spray tans, buy 2 get 2 free, and the side of a Pier 1 store, 50% off everything having grown up mostly outside at work and at play under a South Texas sun that burned a lifetime tan three or four layers deep, a tan that, even after all these years of office work washed daily in neon shadow, has not faded even one shade, the idea of spraying on a tan is something i might be able to work with as well as price cutting of 50% by a store that begins its pricing at 300% above reasonable - i might be able to work with that also but neither one moves me today instead, i'm thinking of what i can't see, Mitch and Lena sitting behind me at the high table they take every Saturday and Sunday, both in their thirties, he a financial adviser and stock analyst, she a fourth grade teacher and mother of three, who somehow hooked up three years ago Mitch is something of a ladies' man i think coming here on weekends with a string of different women Lena the first to last this long and far superior (D and I both agree) to the ditzy blond with a look of presumed entitlement who came with him for about six months, impatient from the first step in the door to leave for a more interesting environment, like maybe someplace where she could read People magazine and get her nails done D and I are pleased that he seems to have come to his senses  Next I have several pieces from an interesting book I picked up at the used book store last week. the book is In the Trail of the Wind, American Indian Poems and Ritual Orations, Edited by John Bierhorst and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1971. Bierhost notes that the term "Indian poetry," while primarily referring to song-texts, also includes prayers, incantations, as well as passages from myths, legends and chronicles and speeches used in ritual, all transmitted orally from generation to generation. Original authorship of most of these pieces is lost in historical antiquity. I could not find credit for translations. The Wind Blows From the Sea Papago By the sandy water I breathe in the odor of the sea, From there the wind comes and blows over the world, By the sandy water I breathe in the odor of the sea, From there the clouds come and rain falls over the world I Cannot Forget You Makah No matter how hard I try to forget you, you always come back to my thoughts. When you hear me singing I am really crying for you. I Pass the Pipe Sioux Friend of Wakinyan, I pass the pipe to you first. Circling I pass to you who dwell with the Father. Circling pass to beginning day. Circling pass to the beautiful one. Circling I complete the four quarters and the time. I pass the pipe to the Father with the Sky. I smoke with the Great Spirit. Let us have a blue day. War Songs Chippewa 1 From the place of the south They come, The birds, Hear the sound of their passing screams. 2 I cast it away, My body. 3 On the front part of the earth, First strikes the light. Your power, Manitou, Give it to me. Song of Reproach Sioux soldiers you fled even the eagle dies The Surrender Speech of Chief Joseph Nez Perce I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohulhulsote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young me who say yes or no. He who led the young men is freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are - perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.  Here's a piece by our friend from Hawaii, Alice Folkart. This strikes me as a very sad poem, beautiful in its deep minimalism, a gem of a poem. The Cat and I The cat and I lie on our backs on the floor, paws raised. See how cute we are? We watch you. Hope you'll notice us. But you change the channel. We don't know any other tricks.  My next poem is Sapphire from her book Black Wings & Blind Angels, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1999. I've previously used poems from one of her other book American Dreams. Ghosts There are thirteen windows in this room. I see the tops of trees and sky, my parents run thru my mind; my father scurrying like a mouse. My mother is sitting. Why have I come here, and what do their ghosts want with me. I know I'm not writing poetry but trying to build a bridge back to poetry. I will go home to a hot stuffy room. I have lived with their ghosts. The black haired mother, her parents on her back. We had, all but one, come to bury her twelve years ago. My father died at seventy-five, a stroke, my father myself? Or me, myself - where is poetry, the feeling I used to have, will it come in the middle of exercises? Finally I have a room with windows. finally my parents are dead, are ghosts. How they beat me, left me, laughed at me, are ghosts. I see him frozen, hurrying, in a picture, my father. I seldom saw my parents together. My mother never mentioned my father's poetry. I found it after he died. I was in his room before his funeral. I had come from New York to bury this father, come to throw dirt on the recovered ghosts of memory, willing to believe as I lay down in his room I was a liar. Then my sister says, my father got her while she was in diapers. In his poetry he talks of sunsets and doesn't mention his parents. My mother said he was ashamed of his parents. When it is my time who will come? I have no children except this poetry that isn't poetry. Our father's penis is the ghost we suck in our dreams. Still I miss that father, raise him from photographs to come sit in my room. Here at the writers' colony I attempt poetry in a room. I see my mother and father at the top of the sky. My parents have come here, home, to help me, ghosts.  Here's evidence that things do work out in the end. Mitch and Lena are getting married they told us this morning when we saw them at Borders in December, in Las Vegas, halfway between her folks here and his family in Oregon his was the traditional approach, getting her parents' permission before he asked her, surprising her with yeses all around before she even knew there was a question to consider i was just thinking about the two of them yesterday, how Mitch used to come in Saturday and Sunday mornings with a different woman every couple of months and how, since he and Lena got together they seem to have stuck and how Mitch seemed happier with this consistency than he had ever been with the revolving door i was talking to them after they gave us the news, congratulating Mitch, offering the bride-to-be my best wishes, warning Mitch that, a December wedding meant that by no later than February 15th he could expect Lena to start trying to change all the things about him he thought she liked during all the time they had gone together and he might as well not fight it because i knew from experience she would win in the end and if she was really good he wouldn't notice until it was all over and done that's when D punched me in the ribs and told me to go back to our table which i did without further comment, showing as i did what an excellent student i am after 32 years daily obedience training i hope Mitch was paying attention so he could see how it's done save himself a lot of trouble later  Here are two short poems from a short book, From the Orient and the Desert, of only 15 poems. The poet is Ghazia A. Algosaibi, Saudi Arabia's former Ambassador to Bahrain and the United Kingdom. Born in Al-Hasa, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, he received his LL.B from Cairo University, his M.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of London. He joined King Saud University as a Lecturer in 1965 and became Dean of the Faculty of Commerce in 1971, In 1974, he was appointed Director of Railroads, and later, as Minister of Industries and Electricity from 1975 to 1982. The book, one of a number he wrote, was published by Kegan Paul International in 1994. Your Eyes I play in your eyes - walk child-like in beach sand collecting sea shells, take refuge in my treasure cave amid the gleam of antique gold, soar and sail with seagulls, rest at the lighthouse, and follow dolphins to unseen shores. A Man Dies So suddenly - in an instant which begins and ends before we grasp that it has been - a world is gone. Death beckons: Yearnings are ice. Life a wind- blown ruin. Love, legends of a bygone time, The voyage seems a route to nothing. A man dies. Earth revolves as usual. People gossip - God bless his soul. We read obituaries and we walk on our own graves.  Here's a short piece from our friend Christopher George. Chris' commuter poem. Sleeping Beauties on the Early Marc Train As the car rocks southward, commuters' heads nod, it's ink-black outside, no sun to light the brown down of thistles, no bright flit of goldfinches to gorge on the bounty. I feel I am the sleepers' shepherd, and they are lambs slumbering in my care. I return to my novel as we rumble over the yawning Patapsco, a glint of moonlight in the stream.  The next several poems are from Making Callaloo, 25 Years of Black Literature, published by St. Martin's Press in 2002. The book's publication was in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Callaloo, a journal of African American literature in the United States, founded by Charles Henry Rowell, a professor at Texas A&M University - College Station. Rowell continues to oversee the journal he began and was editor of this collection. My first poem from the collection is by Gerald Barrax, retired in 2002, but formerly Professor of English, Poet-in-Residence, and Editor of Obsidian at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. He is author of five volumes of poems. All My Live Ones Penny accepted the Alabama neighbor's green meat, Died in our swept-dirt back yard Near the black wash pot, her brown spot penny- Side up. My mother's dog, but like All pets, with no sense of justice: After forty years she still haunts Me, innocent of her death, with These images. My mother en- trusted to me the folly of love, The daily fare of caring for them, And the rest were all mine to lose, Mockery in their dying And more than fear in running away. Rex, ears clipped, tail bobbed, escaped Into Pennsylvania nowhere In a cloud of flea powder for no reason That a twelve-year old could know. Mickey Midnight, the stray gift to me, Sick in bed from school, black As only cats can be, stuck it our Only long enough for the perfect name And took it with him. Fulton (after Sheen the bishop For his round skull cap), my one canary, Died so soon after he'd learned to sing, Finally, that I wondered if song Were worth the cost. And last: Sinbad. One morning before Pharmaceutical Latin In nineteen fifty-two I watched him die My nearest death between my absent brother's Bed and mine,stretched out, rasping, so closely Watched I knew and remember which half-second Distemper tore the last breath out. But the people how different. Since nineteen thirty-three I've been the key to immortality: All it takes is loving me: Both parents, who had me When they were young: the brother Who left me there that morning Alone when the dog died; A wife who let me go With her life, our three sons; Another wife bringing Her hostages to fortune, Two daughters; all the lovers. What will I do? They are all here. At my age what will I do With only a bird and a dog long ago? I cried for days. For days and days. The next poem from Callaloo is by Kevin Young, Ruth Lily Professor of Poetry at Indiana University. He is author of To Repel Ghosts and, earlier, the prize-winning collection Most Way Home. Cassius Clay by Basquiat 1982, acrylic & oil paintstick on canvas I'm pretty! I shook up the world! Clay shouts to the announcer after trouncing Sonny Liston - the next day he will turn Ali. Butterfly, bee - none stung or swole carpet-red as the paint B covered this canvas, drawing blood - not even Cassius called out his name Refusing to recognize Allah - like Terrell or fool Floyd Patterson - will get you a new haircut whether you want one or not. How he hounds Liston, waving his prize belt - a noose for Sonny's ex- con neck. Petty crook Ali just bout serves time himself - title stripped like paint - Army taking away his right to fight when he won't fight them Viet Cong who've done him nothing wrong. Houston, we gots a problem - will not bow or stand when his no-longer name the Draft Board calls. Lords over Liston - Get up, you bum! - who will fall to a phantom punch 1st rd, forget to get up. (Died, Liston did, five years later, in Vegas, the needle in his arm, the neon.) Ali, now he could hit you into next year - but apart from the flogging, his flaunting, were the taunts challengers heard ringing Uncle Tom! Come on Come on White America! even above the ten count & crowd - his undented smile - that smarts still.  Had a couple of bad nights lately. Guess I have to lay off the pizza before i go to bed. two long nights two bad nights in a row long nights, hard, like sleep was hard labor and i was sweating it out, working at it, pushing hard on the pillow, fighting a bucking bed dreams about people i haven't seen in years, the internal consistency of dreams pushing me down nonsensical roads unfinished business, i don't know, maybe that was it - some tie we have, these people and me that hasn't broken yet, some tie pulling me back to fix whatever broke between us and i remember nothing of the details of these dreams, only a sense of desperation, like recurring death memory, death, a trail remembered through rocks and bright desert sand and sun and thirst and heat like a spoiled glass, all lines and shimmers the desperation of anticipation it is bed time and i am not looking forward to the night  Next I have a longish poem, actually three poems, from the book Anna Akhmatova - Selected Poems, published by Zephyr Press in 2000. This is a bilingual book, Russian and English translations by Judith Hemschemeyer on facing pages. Born in 1889, Akhmatova achieved her first fame as an icon of pre-Revolutionary Russian literature. After the revolution she became a voice for those persecuted under Stalin. She was rehabilitated during WWII because of her patriotism, but then suffered repression that was not lifted until a few years before her death in 1966. Northern Elegies Everything is a sacrifice to your memory.... Pushkin First Prehistory I no longer live there.... Pushkin Dostoevsky's Russia. The moon, Almost a quarter hidden by the bell tower. Pubs are bustling, droshkies flying, In Gorokhovaya, near Znameniya and Smolny, Huge, five-storied monstrosities are growing, dance classes everywhere, money changers' signs, A line of shops: "Henriette," "Basile," "Andre" And magnificent coffins: "Shumilov Senior." But still, the city hasn't changed much. Not only I, but others as well, Have noticed that sometimes it could Resemble an old lithograph, Not first class, but fairly decent, From the Seventies, I'd guess. Especially in winter, before dawn, Or at twilight - then behind the gates Liteiny boulevard darkens, rigid, straight, Not yet disgraced by the Moderne, And opposite me lie - Nekrosov Anbd Saltikov....Each on his memorial plaque. Oh, how horrified they would be To see those plaques! I move on And the splendid ditches of old Russia, And the rotting arbors in the little gardens, And a windowpane as black as a hole in the ice, And it seems that such things happened here That we'd better not look in. Let's leave. Not every place agrees To render up its secrets (And I won't be in Optima anymore....) The rustle of skirts, the pattern of plaids, The walnut frames of the mirrors Amazed by Karenina's beauty, And in the narrow hall the wallpaper We feasted our eyes on in childhood By the yellow light of the kerosene lamp, And the same plush on the armchairs.... Everything out of order, rushed, somehow.... Fathers and grandfathers incomprehensible. Lands mortgaged. And in Baden - roulette. And a woman with translucent eyes (Of such deep blue that to gaze into them And not think of the sea was impossible), With the rarest of names and white hands, And a kindness that as an inheritance I have from her, it seems - Useless gift for my harsh life.... The country shivers and the convict from Omsk Understood everything and made the sign of the cross, over it all. Now he shuffles everything around And, over this primordial chaos, Like some kind of spirit, he rises. Midnight sounds. His pen squeaks, and page after page Stinks of Semyonov Square. This is when we decided to be born, And timing it perfectly So as not to miss any of those pageants Yet to come, we bid farewell to non-existance. September 3, 1940 Leningrad October 1943 Tashkent Second So here it is - that autumn landscape Of which I've been so frightened all my life: And the sky - like a flaming abyss And the sounds of the city - heard as if From another world, forever strange: It's as if everything I've struggled with inside myself All my life received its own life And bodied forth in these Blind walls, in this black garden.... And right now, over my shoulder, My old house still spies on me With it squinting, disapproving eye, That omnipresent window. Fifteen years - pretending to be Fifteen granite centuries, But I myself was like granite: Now beg, suffer, summon The queen of the sea. It doesn't matter. No need to.... But I should have convinced myself That all this has happened many times, And not to me alone - to others too. And even worse. No, not worse - better. And my voice - and this, really, Was the most frightened - uttered from the darkness: "Fifteen years ago, with what rejoicing You greeted this day, you begged the heavens And the choirs of stars and the choirs of oceans To salute the glorious meeting With the one you left today.... So this is your silver anniversary: Summon the guests, stand in splendor, celebrate!" March 1942, Tashkent Third Blessed is he who visits this world At his appointed hour. Tyutchev N.A.O. I, like a river, Was rechanneled by this stern age. They gave me a substitute life. It began to flow In a different course, passing the other one, And I do not recognize my banks. Oh, how many spectacles I've missed, And the curtain rose without me And then fell. How many of my friends I've never met once in my life, And how many cities' skylines Could have drawn tears from my eyes; But I only know one city in the world And I could find my way around it in my sleep. And how many poems I didn't write, And their mysterious chorus prowls around me, And, perhaps, may yet somehow Strangle me.... I am aware of beginnings and endings, And life after the end, and something That I don't have to remember just now. And some other woman occupied The special place reserved for me And bears my legal name, Leaving me the nickname, with which I did, probably, everything that could be done. I will not lie, alas, in my own grave. But sometimes the playful spring wind Or the combination of words in some book, Or somebody's smile suddenly drags Me into the life that never took place. In this year, such and such would have happened, In that year - that: traveling, seeing, thinking And remembering. and entering into a new love As into a mirror, with dim awareness Of betrayal and of the wrinkle That wasn't there the day before. ............................................. But I had observed from there The life I am living today, I would finally discover envy.... September 2, 1945 Leningrad  Now, a piece by Cliff Keller, our musician friend from California. Mountain Passage Head down, ascending, avian shadows flicker on the trail, morning sun refracts through new blades of grass, the cochlear hum underscores the birdsong. I stop at the ridge top below, progress looks up and salutes. The opposing valley face hangs like a tapestry on a wall, verdant pointillism of spring aspen, heavy pine, and forest shadow. I reach out to brush the frayed top of the ridgeline and notice Birds and insects surround me now, stillness is the attraction, but stillness is not what brought me here. I drop Into a glen, stream's white noise courses through a tuft of shivering leaves. I march through the still parade and watch to the right the shuffling alignment of tarnished white aspens, the myriad of silver eyes that stare where waving limbs once gestured. I do this so often: turn to track the cadence of my own passing as in this poem.  You think war is hell - try getting old. the baby-docs are back the baby-docs are back pushing tables together around their professor for their Monday morning seminar on body parts and diseases and other stuff that scares the crap out of me they are so remarkably young looking, though there is one who looks like she might be older, nineteen, twenty, maybe no matter how closely i watch, the world somehow sneaks right past, leaves me behind in a dust of events and names that mean nothing to me most days i read the birthday feature in our local newspaper that gives the age of celebrities on their birthday and find that i recognize nearly none of the names of those under 55 and am shocked at the age of those i know - Hayley Mills, for crying out loud, little, blond, pigtailed Hayley Mills, 63 years old a couple of months ago today, the bad news is that Tommy Smothers is 72 the other end of the list bothers me as well Marissa Jaret Winokur is 36 and Lori Beth Denberg is 33 (who the hell are Marissa Jaret Winokur and Lori Beth Denberg) modern - i always think of myself as a modern kind of guy, but then i see this kind of stuff and begin to think i ought to go back to my cave, start a fire, study my etchings on the wall, and try to figure out what happened between my now and the now the rest of the world lives in  Next, I have three poems by Daisy Zamora from her book Riverbed of Memory, published by City Lights in 1988. It's a bilingual book, Spanish and English on facing pages, with translation by Barbara Paschke Zamora was program director of clandestine Radio Sandino during the Nicaguran revolution and later served as Minister of Culture in the Sandinista government. Downpour From an airtight office window I gaze out at the downpour. Yellow flowers from an acacia shaken by the wind roll along a rusty tin roof. A fish in a fishbowl I recall with envy the young girl who was drenched and happy, jumping mud puddles and ignoring calls because later my go-between great aunt hidden from my grandfather would dry my hair, change my clothes, clean the mud off my shoes. And wrapped up in a bedspread warm as love I slept An old downpour that succeeds in soaking me only within is now beating the tin roof, flooding the canals and levies and the riverbed of memory! Old Shoes In a corner they await you, connoisseurs of all your life's wanderings, even though you'd like to get rid of them: you prefer other shoes that now look better to you. But time has made them a mold of your feet: the contour of you left heel. Nothing and no one conforms to you and your ways more than they. More faithful than all your women, more faithful than all your friends, more faithful than some of your relatives. Lullaby For A Dead Newborn What would your smile have looked like? What would your first word have been? So much hoping for nothing! My expectant breasts had to dry up. A hasty photo suggests your clear profile, your tiny mouth. But I can't recall how you were, how you would have been. I felt you so alive, moving around, safe in my belly. Now I wake up shivering in the middle of the night - my womb hollow - and cling to that indistinct first cry I heard, anesthetized, in the operating room.  This poem is a little untruthful. The fact is, though the rodeo and all associated tomfoolery sounds like it would have been fun with i was sixteen years old, I've reached the age now where if I can't turn in a circle with both arms outstretched and not hit another person I'm in a crowd too crowded for me. I have wanted to be downtown to take pictures of the longhorn drive, but have missed it every year because it's over before I know about it. But I can still write about it. rodeo days coming home from Del Rio yesterday i passed a group of trail riders about half way between D'hanis and Hondo, about thirty of them on their horses with a chuck wagon and the whole trail ride business that's happening now, riders from 200 miles all around coming in for the annual rodeo, riding their horses and sleeping outside and probably doing a little drinking around the campfire at night for two weeks in January the rodeo is a big deal, kicked off with longhorns herded through downtown on Commerce Street from the stockyards to the arena followed the next day with the cowboy breakfast when thousands of men and women in boots and cowboy hats gather at 4:30 in the morning of what is usually the coldest day of the year for coffee, chorizo and egg tacos and early morning eeehaaas and hot'damns and howthahellareyous and shitspilledmycoffeeallovermybrandnewcowboyshirts once the preliminary longhorn cattle driving and breakfasting are done there are big shows every night with a lineup of music from Little Joe and La Familia to George Strait and Tony Bennett and rodeo action with calf roping and bucking horse riding and barrel-racing and bull riding and all the other rodeo competitions ranging from displays of true cowboy skills to flat-out drunk-wrangling, double-dare, crazy stuff and finally for all the 4H'ers, a chance for all every cow and pig and goat and chicken to have its chance in the spotlight of blue-ribbon glory, followed by a parting filled with tears from the boys and girls who raised and pampered them as their fifteen minutes of celebrity and fame are over and they're bought and sold and usually eaten country living is truly not for the weak and mewley  Now I have two pieces by our friend Joanna M. Weston. Cold Water inching step by step I feel my way from one pebble to the next hoping for sand at the each tentative toe-down cold edges past ankles, calves knees, and I stretch tall anticipating the moment when my groin freezes and stomach chills then I will stand flurry the water with hands full of intent watch a child in the shallows sunlight on waves a canoe far out I procrastinate warmth on my shoulders but the moment comes when I prayer hands dive in swim hard Listening heard a train felt its thunder thrum my length of bone and knew the message: "don't stay in one place move on, change day to hour "when dawn rattles on the window open and let her in "when death knocks at the door go out to meet him "there's no vision as stale as the track not taken so listen and hold the sound in your blood"  Although when i wrote the next poem I wasn't really sure I was going anywhere, in the end I did and had a nice little trip - made a loop up into some towns west of San Antonio I used to visit on business but never really had a chance to take a closer look. And finally got a look at the Popeye statue. February ramble i had been thinking about taking a trip today itinerary set in my mind west on Highway 90 to a bunch of little towns where i used to have offices i visited often, always without time to see the sights beginning in Castroville, then through Hondo, Sabinal, Knippa and a quick stop in Uvalde, at John Nance Garner's grave-site for no reason except i've driven past it five hundred times and never stopped from there through Carrizo Springs to Crystal City, Spinach Capital of Texas, for a look at their Popeye statue on Main Street i never took the time to see before to Eagle Pass and the stink of low grade diesel from the buses in Piedras Negras across the border follow the river west to little Quemada, a fertile little river basin of pecan and peach trees and vineyards surrounded by desert and finally Del Rio and a good nights sleep before continuing west to the Indian wall paintings in the canyons a few miles east of Langtry and the Jersey Lily and the little island in the middle of the Rio Grande where Roy Bean engineered the Fitzsimmons-Maher Prizefight in 1896 might be a nice two days a break from the normal day-to-day gone today back tomorrow except it's almost 10:30 in the morning and i haven't left yet so i might just stay home  So the ramble ends, leaving us done until next week. Until then - All of the work included in this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz. |
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