Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

Poetry distills and crystallizes the human experience
October 17, 2007

Poetry springs from the soul as the language of the subconscious. Poetry echoes in the brain, the words bouncing around, resonating, and becoming corporeal within the imagination. Poetry is dreaming, a device of transportation to an altered state. Poetry is epiphany. Regional poetry is a daytrip in the mind.

Larry D. Thomas is the 2008 Poet Laureate of Texas. He was born and reared in West Texas (and lived in Midland in the 1950s.) He should be required reading for high school English students in West Texas, especially in 2008. His voice is our voice, giving shape to our endemic shared experience. On Saturday October 20th, he will be at the Roadrunner Room in the Scharbauer Student Center at Midland College from 2 to 4 p.m. There is no charge.

Poetry is oral. Before printing was invented, bards were living libraries, reciting epic poems of culture and history. Poetry is the apogee of storytelling. Poetry is best when experienced, intently listening as the poet proclaims.

Read this poem out loud. Read it several times, experimenting with enunciation, rhythm, intonation, and emphasis. Play with the words, wave your arms and gesture with your fingers as you read – “conduct” the words. Midland College also reprinted this poem in their advertising for his reading. It is a powerful poem – for it conveys the realization that rattlesnakes have omnipresence in the consciousness of a Llanero.

Driving Through West Texas

Locked for an hour on cruise control
without meeting another vehicle,
I’m hypnotized by yellow
stripes, whizzing by like arrows.

Sixty miles back, I missed the sign
posted by a Mobil Hopper
would’ve liked, the last gas stop
for the next hundred miles.

The wind howls through my cracked
window. Though moonless, the night
reminds me of the set
of an old Frankenstein flick,

flaring with hundreds of torches.
The Day-Glo reddish-orange
needle of my gas gauge
quivers, almost horizontal.

I swerve to miss a diamondback
slithering across the macadam.
For no clear reason, I say aloud
the word diamondback.

It startles me, not so much the word
itself but the intimacy
with which I utter it,
as if it were the name of a friend.

Walter McDonald is another superb Llanero poet. His work should also be part of the curriculum in our schools. He was the Texas Poet Laureate of 2001.

Neighbors Miles Away

Blistering heat shimmers our fields
like lakes. It seldom rains.
Surveyors rode here in 1880 hungover,
swearing they’d mapped these miles before,
cursing sextants and starving comancheros

who left these plains to settlers.
Coronado’s army crossed four hundred years ago,
coughing, praying for clouds, crossing themselves
and grumbling, tugging their stumbling
Spanish mares, rumors of gold

On their minds, a thousand miles
from leaky galleons anchored in the Gulf.
Our wells flood the dung and hoof prints
of their route. We pump the purest water
three hundred feet to grain

they never dreamed would grow.
This sky is what they saw,
these level fields. We’re not alone.
When we drive flat roads to town,
neighbors miles away look up and wave.

The Sibley Nature Center promotes the concept of bioregional identity. We are all Llaneros, citizens of the Llano Estacado, a huge giant tableland. Our landscape influences our character – we are optimists because “the sky is the limit.” When a human is the largest object visible in a landscape, confidence comes easily – “I am a giant – I can do anything!” We Llaneros are capable of great endurance – while surviving dozens of days of 100 degree summer heat and steady 30 mph dust-laden winds, a person suddenly realizes that if you grit your teeth and set yourself to the task, the job can still be done, and done well, no matter the conditions. Poets such as Thomas and McDonald are important. They give voice to what most of us can not.

Why don’t we teach the poetry of our regional Poet Laureates in our schools? Why don’t we have more public poetry readings? West Texas has had two other Texas Poet Laureates – Mildred Lindsay Raiborn (1953-1955) of San Angelo, and Weems S. Dykes of McCamey (1980-1981). On the Internet I found their books for sale at rare book bookstores and listed in library collections. Does anyone locally have copies of their books? I would love to read them!

Poets are not sissies, or delicate rarified self-centered twits. McDonald and Thomas are men of accomplishment – Thomas worked in the criminal justice system and McDonald was an Airforce Pilot before teaching at the Airforce Academy and Texas Tech. I will not be able to attend Thomas’s reading at the college – I have to give an all day seminar for the Llano Estacado chapter of the master naturalists.

Poets are master naturalists – master naturalists have an eye for detail and an ability to “read the land,” interpreting the landscape, finding subtle patterns and detecting the effects of the past. What the heck – I am bringing my class to the reading! See you there!

The Llano Estacado chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists will be beginning the 2008 class in January. Class participants will be required to take 50 hours of instruction about the flora and fauna of the Llano Estacado. In exchange, they will be asked to perform 50 hours of public service for state parks, non-profit conservation groups or schools. The cost is $75 per person or $125 for a couple. Call 684-6827 and ask for me, and I will put your name on the list for next year.

Tarantulas; Over 30 people called us after last week’s story, from Garden City, Seminole, Andrews, Greenwood, Gardendale, Odessa, Midland, and Fort Davis. All but one reported seeing plenty of tarantulas – so tarantulas are not disappearing from West Texas. Two callers discussed predators eating tarantulas, and mentioned seeing grackles eating the big spiders. We have hundreds of grackles spend the night in the pond at Sibley. Our 49 acre population of tarantulas has been eaten!