Poem - Oliphant - Two Texas Poets Roundezvous at the Bowie Library
Two Texas Poets Rendezvous at the Bowie Public Library
Summer: the climate dry
the county too
no relief not even a
beer ad’s mountain springs
on coming in from Cowtown
“Out Where the West Begins”
out where the wetness ends
where it all begins
the love & hate all over again
the meeting Hoggard heading here
to this Hudson Bay midway between
Fort & Falls / Worth & Wichita:
cities that saw our tongues
born like the Colonel’s knife
in a bayou gaming fight
so cutting to
the unsuspecting couples gave them birth
their babes turned vegetarians
& worse: versifiers in a land of steak & leather
parents so pained by the fun we’d make
of all their sacred cows
our sandals still a sacrilege
ours the hides they’d tan to within
an inch of our godless lives
our beards turning them in narrow graves
& as we drive slowly across the state
our herds of matinee memories raise
clouds of half-regret
then enter this genesis town
a Gary Cooper showdown
but in place of six-guns
slung at hips
our latest manuscripts
publications drawn out friendly-like
from brief case & manila folder
on the table poems spread like poker hands
leaning back two trappers fully clothed
floating on this air-conditioned carpet
a green lake in early spring
would-be mountain men who fountain up
spray one another with
metaphor & myth
trading titles of little mags:
Coyote’s Journal
Granite Noose Prairie Schooner
long winter tales
of the big one missed
(a sonnet nearly taken)
the librarian’s frozens looks
thawing some
at the sound of Frost & Yeats: bubbling brooks
that had they come
to these sizzling western streets
the posse would have found
their desperado words as hard to handle
as flashfloods in mid-July
at the café where we lunch
all around is talk of rain
sighted east of Saginaw
though the only darkening to reach this far
a pair of strangers
dares to eat here hairy & all
like Blacks still out
after the sun has set
& yet because love breaks the strictest laws
we leave a generous tip
despite what reason recommends
& the tide of hatred this quiet town’s recalled
by Dave Oliphant
As heard on Texas Poets Podcast - April, 2016
NOTE: This biographical poem remembers two poets meeting in protest of the close-mindedness of mid-century Texas "sundown towns" with unofficial curfews for African American residents.
