Texas Weather
It's all I've ever known
except for that year
in Springfield, Missouri,
second grade,
where snow was deeper
though no more frequent
and everything seemed green
even in July
without perpetual hiss
from sprinkler heads
and soaker hoses.
Texans like to think
our weather is changeable
and I suppose it is
though others claim the same
inconstancy
for Iowa and Illinois.
I know this: the sky is vast here
and the sun unforgiving
to any architecture not the best
and although some
may glory in the vastness of the sky
most of us try
not to give it much attention
lest it come for us
and crush us like June bugs
in a Walmart parking lot, Saturday night,
when everyone
runs out of beer at once.
except for that year
in Springfield, Missouri,
second grade,
where snow was deeper
though no more frequent
and everything seemed green
even in July
without perpetual hiss
from sprinkler heads
and soaker hoses.
Texans like to think
our weather is changeable
and I suppose it is
though others claim the same
inconstancy
for Iowa and Illinois.
I know this: the sky is vast here
and the sun unforgiving
to any architecture not the best
and although some
may glory in the vastness of the sky
most of us try
not to give it much attention
lest it come for us
and crush us like June bugs
in a Walmart parking lot, Saturday night,
when everyone
runs out of beer at once.
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Author's Note
... deep in the heart of Texas.
Other stories by Gary Hardaway
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You took me from NJ back to my Texas childhood. *
This is an excellent poem, there is so much above and beneath. Terrific!
*
Gary, the above comment and fave was from me, Susan Tepper, using my mom's computer and forgetting to sign into f'naut! Mom had some surgery and I'm a little bleary.
Thanks, Lynn. I hope you can forgive me...
Thanks, Susan. I appreciate your reading and clarification.
Great finishing lines. Yes, that should happen, but it doesn't (or at least not often enough).*
grandeur *
Thank you, Joani and Penny. Thank you very much.
This is soooo Texas. At least parts of it.
Sometime I’ll tell you my story about the liquor Store in Richardson.
Then there's the winter wind in Dallas. Jesus H.
THIS ONE RINGS THE BELL FOR ME. I recently told another Texican that there’s nothing as cool as a cool Texan.
I stand by that.
"I know this: the sky is vast here / and the sun unforgiving"
Very fine.
Thank you, Bill.
Steve, it's easier to get a drink here now. Even here in Plano. And you're right about the winter wind. it sucks the life out of you.
Thanks very much for the appreciation and commiseration.
I've seen that sky through the Live Oak branches in Austin. It can crush.
Thanks, Gary. We try to put up Live Oaks here on the prairie to mitigate the sky but it's always there.
Made me remember being a kid in Texas. Love the last stanza. That feeling the sky could come get you anytime. Yeah.*
Thank you, John.
The sky out west makes easterners humble, but all that can be wrought by that once calm sky can be terrifying.
Thanks, Gloria, for reading.
It's a bad-ass sky we have here.
I really love this piece as much as I love/hate Texas. The sky is vast there, it's true, it's so easy to get lost in that dome. A great poem, Gary, with a sensibility that spans oceans.
Thank you, Marcus. I am grateful for your reading and commentary.