All the ambience of Texas once brought me to my knees.
I wanted to praise their wide-brim hats and long cascading lines
to churches, but not the sudden dust storms and downpours
that dim the city of Houston to the charred shade of gray
of concrete yards where prisoners at Guantánamo
still stroll to dreamy tunes by Iron Butterfly an hour a day.
You cannot make up Texas, you who only knew
the President and the President’s cabinet, the President’s Yes men
and Yes women, the swagger, the high-mindedness.
There was nothing candid there, nothing of nature’s shine
reflected on the river (where we don’t belong
except to muddy the surface), where black-crowned herons
settle on one foot in the Rio Grande, their minds occupied
by nothing but fish, one particular silver catfish—
they couldn’t care less about the crappie, the bullhead, a school
of pickerel—when I’m inside the head of a heron I think
we’re so much alike, so much more and less alone.
Oh my seismograph, you are such a personal feeling. A minor figure,
of little import raised to the nth power. But how could I stand here
on one foot all day, pretending you can’t see me?
Was I just a little shiver dipping my beak into the water?