Pages

Thursday, September 2, 2010

AMARILLO


Yellow
Or someone’s word for it
Was the name of my early place.
A dirt-blown, wind swept 
Kind of a town
It’s name really should have been 
BROWN.

Seasons of sand, snow, and wind
Shrilled through starry nights alone,
Defied by a few rare elms
Growing green in front of 
Yesterday’s homes.

I remember
Bits of straw,
Sun-dried grass,
And tumbleweeds racing
Always chased by the wind.

Out from the town on those endless plains
The blowing wheat bent down too
While that great sky provided all there was
And all we ever knew.


© Gay Reiser Cannon. All Rights Reserved

This poem was published in 2006 in Bright Star Magazine

11 comments:

  1. another great piece of texas...and once again beautifully written..you are very good at capturing scene..cheers pete

    ReplyDelete
  2. By what name
    you called that town
    Didn’t matter it was home

    Wind-blown dirt, shrilling
    with an elm leaf some called dancing
    still it danced around what you called home

    On starry nights, you could see dreams faraway winking
    As sun-dried grass and tumbleweeds raced across dark fields
    of a place you thought would always be your home

    Wheat with full-bloomed heads bent low
    waving to the wind rushing by with bits of straw
    lifting them high into that great sky that watched over you home

    ************

    Home is it where you lay your head or where you heart lives?

    ReplyDelete
  3. desk49
    You dwarf me. I think your response was better than the original. Such honor you give me! Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I know you meant I dwarfed my other post in here.
    There's no way I could dwarf your poem in either post.

    My reply is just how I feel about your work. If my reply was good then yours was great to bring that kind of feeling out of me.

    Your words inspired me to write and nothing could be a greater gift than that.

    I should be thanking you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Beautiful imagery. I can see the place.

    And that photo. I just had to sit and look at it for a while. :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. The imagery is great going with those lovely words...
    suja

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you. I think everyone who reads this feels a little of that town going through a windy, sandy drought but filled with dreams symbolized by the expansive sky.

    ReplyDelete
  9. We just got back from a trip to Idaho, through Nevada and eastern Oregon - similar views though much drier than your photo. I have never been through that kind of country before, and it was quite an experience. Your poem captured everything I saw, and explained the answer to my question: why would anyone want to live there? I too was captured by the sky's expanse - I love the way you worded it - this was a beautiful, stunning poem

    ReplyDelete
  10. Completely love this poem, it is practically perfect in every way. I adore the first verse which stands alone in many ways and also the closing two lines: "While that great sky provided all there was / And all we ever knew", it just says so much about growing up in a rural farming community and your horizons.

    Libby

    ReplyDelete
  11. Yes'm. My grandpa--everyone called him, Bunk--was fond of saying the Texas panhandle was the only place you could stand knee-deep in mud and have sand blow in your face.
    I used to spend a week or so with my cousin in Borger, and the wind bout drove me crazy. It would be howlin through the windows when we'd go to sleep, and it would be howling when we woke up.
    We'd play baseball in the vacant lot behind the house, and if you hit a short high pop up to straight-away cener field, it woul come back to you, and you could just shuffle around and hit it again.
    (You realize I just wrote a poem, don't ya.) Copy and paste time!
    Thanks for sharing the "yellow" poem. I like it!

    ReplyDelete