Empire Lost

Nevada Texas loafs on Center Street

where Empire once stood,

on this black hot prairie that too few

bother to ever really plow.

Its old barns contently shedding layers

of their corrugated skins are consoled

by herds of silent rusting cars

and a dead lawn mower or two.

Muted houses lie breathless

with their plywood windowed eyes,

blinded from the glare of summer’s absolution,

dying just a little more every day.

Like slumbering frogs in a simmered pot of slow decay.

I lay back on trodden flat-blade grass in yards

of Grand Canyon cracks pleading for pardon

or faith-healed geologic repeal from the

ever blaring golden sun. This familiar sod

is no kin to my now distant home rye grass.

St Augustine turf whispers prayers for rain,

rare these late fall days. Even thunder

holds its breath till springtime comes again to call.

The evening breeze slakes the days last hours

enough to rouse the sleeping crickets to metered song. 

The black skied country night spills over me,

alive with the milky wash of stars that the cities

 hide from view. One by one each bashfully shows

their face as my eyes adjust to their stage.

I have missed you all so very much.

So here I sit, front row, center

in my sister’s kneaded garden of stubborn onions

and okra, with their leaf-bent heads stewing

in the east Texas gumbo silently hoping

to see the lost days of Empire once again.

 

11.5.2011