poetry
Sarah Cortez and Larry D. Thomas
Thundering
(bronze by Frederic Remington, The Stampede)
In All Its Array of Colors
Often, when I’m seated on our balcony
and gaze out toward the mountains to our north,
I think of Balmorhea Lake forty-five miles
(as the proverbial crow flies) distant.
I wait for the memory I know will visit,
constant as morning coffee with my wife.
Today, it’s the ten-pound Largemouth Bass,
It’s a bed
of tossing horn tips
the cow herd offers
above relentless hooves
and weathered flanks.
A sharp bed
of stampeding death
this wiry cowboy
and his horse
hope they won’t lie in
this rainy, moonless night.
by Sarah Cortez
a pound for each year of my age at the time,
I muscled ashore while fishing with Dad and Sam.
I thought my rod would break, bowed as it was
with the big fish lodging its body beneath rocks
on the lake bottom, thrashing for its life.
I dug my heels deep into the muddy shoreline,
took a deep breath, and reeled in but an inch of line,
it seemed, every five minutes. Exhausted,
I got it ashore and Dad netted it, so proud of me
it hurt us both. We cleaned, filleted, and fried
the thing for supper. Its smell filled our travel trailer
for days, oozing from our pores like fresh garlic.
Even the aluminum Airstream Dad, Mom, Sam and I
tried to fall asleep in, gleamed in the moonglow,
luminous as the scales of a bass.
by Larry D. Thomas
Cenizo
First Quarter 2016
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