100 yards

It was a slow process,

But somewhere you wove into me

our strings together tangled

And our strands together made 100 yards

All balled up and ready

And somehow, they saw.

They said, forget this! Move on from this bunched up, rolled up, intertwined love! You forgot yourselves!

But there was no untangling

And no urge, no desire to see that self again

Only this new 100 yards would do.

We said, we can’t. We do not want to.

This is us. Red and blue together. A purple hue.

300 feet, still growing

Still fusing two worlds and more ready

Together tangled

Intertwined and raveled

Shaking their heads, they looked beyond us

Chewing on the moment

The piteous despair, youth gone,

There were still many torments to come

100 yards can be so sweet

A pair is stronger than a strand, right?

But violet shrinks away

When the years begin to fray the once strong

Twisted together yarn, what can be done

For blue and red, the you and I, long left behind

The Untwined?

The Undead

We’ve all seen them
And yet every year they shock us
We’ll be driving down those old country roads
Each turn and weave written onto the inside of our skulls from repetition
Muscle memory
And then a shock of blue
Pulls our pupils from the twin yellow lines
To a pasture of bluebonnets
To a hillside
Of royal blue with Monet-like spots of white.
Our jaws drop.
We slacken our hands on the wheel
The blaring base uneven in our speakers forgotten
Our destination, stress, and sense of time
Likewise forgotten
The mass of wildflowers
Gentle in the wind
Demands a pause from our mundane bustle
as our tires screech to a finish
Our eyes roaming Mother Nature’s paint strokes
The enchantress´ retort to the our calamities
We remember
As children
Our mothers snapping photos
Of us amongst their masses
Our dads’ cautionous voices,
”lookout for snakes!”
And each year since then
As our lives and struggles unfold
In familiar patterns
We are demanded to stop
By these vast patches of sapphire
Their bewildering white eyes on top
Their cheer in the spring sunrays
We stop
As captives to the bluebonnets
And then they die.
And life continues on with its blur
The busy duty
And stir
Of monotony. Of work.
Little fits of laughter and seasons of tears
And every year.
Every spring in Texas.
The ocean appears in the middle of pastures all over the heart of the state
We stop.
Mouth’s agape.
Their persistence in our lives stunning us
They refill our blood
With something native and wild
Something resembling stillness
And comfort.
A seed within the soil
A root in our souls
We stop
Our nostrils flare to accommodate
The saccharine scent that fills the sky
Our hearts suddenly find the righteous rhythm
The one we remember as children
running with the our dog Jo
We stop
And the cobalt and white reminds us
This is home
This is the dirt and horizon
That gives and gives
We stop
And the bluebonnets sing to us
Of lives and spoils
The centuries that have come and gone with their touch
They choked on the iron blood hot from Palm Sunday
Their young ones grow from the hurricanes we name with bitter memories
They remember the sunsets of pinks, and oranges, purples, and blues
And they have seen from their hill tops
The Great Egrets that drag their feet over the calm waters while the moon is on duty in the sky
We stop
And just feel
Because the sun has ways of making us stop
And the seasons paint images that make us breath again
And feel peace again.
One day our children will nestle in their blossoms
Waiting for the click of our camera
And years will go by
we’ll grow old
And need glasses for our film covered eyes
And canes for the hurts in our hips
And when the cerulean wildflowers grow to greet us
We’ll be perched
Waiting for them
Wrinkles and white hairs for all our worries
And our lips will spread wide open
A sunbeam in our eyes
The sea of blue buds
The thumping of our organs
The moments that make up a life
We will sit perched.
Stopped
Still
We’ll lift our heads up
Our hands joined
And thank Texas
Thank the blue and white hues
For the halt in our tires
For the inhalation of home
The wax and wane of peace and thunder
All the setbacks that killed our giggles
The pitch in our voices late at night when money grew tight
The felicity of our baby’s first steps
The tale of the first rock concert that gave us goosebumps everywhere,
And all the summits and wonders that filled our mortal existence
For the reflection of blue fields embedded deep in our eyes
The ups and downs in this mountainous irresistible window we have
Where our eyes will open
And our chests with heave
Our bodies will swing to the symphony of cascadas late at night
And there will come a time when our loved ones and long forgotten peers will look down at our bodies
Laying in our softest silk amongst the dirt
The droplets from their eyes will be the last spring rain upon our cheeks
Before we are gone.
So, we stop.
Where the bluebonnets lure us
We listen to their religious whispers
Year after year
And we feel our kinship
Our cyclical, limitless, weightlessness
The myriad of the entire rear view mirror and the long stretch of road.
Then with a sigh we remember plans
Getting places
Dates and deadlines
The buzz of of our cell phone ringing somewhere
Nagging us back to reality
To real time
To practical matters
We look out the window one last time
And just feel.
Our fill.