Tank

Government money - sometime after the war.
Some senator set it up
So ranchers and farmers
Could trap a little water by throwing up dirt,
Stopping it in some dry gullies.
And when the mud settled
The water was good for cows and such
And fish, even, if it rained again.

Some places they called these places ponds.
But our places were tanks.
I think the little tank in front of Granny's
Was dug by mule by Daddy and Dad
Before the government money.
I hear Dad was baptized there by Daddy,
Among the little black waterbugs.

First tank, second and third tank
Measured the thirsty distance from home when we roamed the brush,
Never considering the buggy cow slime soup drinkable.
How did water snakes, turtles and leopard frogs find
These far flung ranchland oases, often ignored and leaky?
One small, smiling man with leathery face and gnarled hands,
Roy, took tanks to heart.

What tanks could be he made them be.
A husbandman to the government's money,
What he made was for us too.
Distant relatives and pretty little town girls enjoyed his tanks.
There were fish in more than one of Roy's tanks,
But there was, really, only one Roy's Tank.

Size, beauty, clarity, durability -
All roadgraded into this grand little reservoir,
Catching the flow from a great sloping glade before it sluiced
Into White Creek when the big rains came.

We approached the tank baitless most times,
Maybe carrying an axe to split a new-felled mesquite,
Hacking the iron wood with hopes of splintering out
The prized flesh-colored wood sawyer - long horned beetle's spawn.
Congenital Jungian knowledge promised
The biggest bass or catfish would take this squirming daemon.
Tiny frogs at the verge, easily slapped by willow sticks,
Or grubs under dead trees and grasshoppers in the weeds
All seemed willing enough to act the part, when stunned and stuck.
Spin cast rigs and yellow, black-specked shyster lures
Graduated us from bait hunter-gatherers to anglers.

More than a few fish fries were supplied by Roy’s tank
But there were lots that got away and, others that didn’t, became legend
Like the five-pounder caught in the back under the dorsal.
In the big drought the deep holes, muddied from cows,
Held on when the other tanks shriveled and cracked.
Then came the rains again and Roy restocked
Without ever getting gratitude from the beneficiaries
Who loved what he gave.

Finally, I offer the thanks deserved.


Granny’s Porch

That space of gray-painted one-by-six shiplap boards
Provided a covered entry
And room for two of those old circle-backed iron chairs
The southern porch made famous.

Granny and we sat there, facing the shaded east
To catch the southeastern sea breeze
That came every day when the sun had heated the land up enough
To suck it in from the slightly cooler Gulf.

We grandkids - cousins - might crowd eight or ten at a time,
Yelling and laughing -
Jumping over the periwinkle or petunia bed to the yard
That Granny’d kept alive through the droughts from the dregs in the old cistern.

But the real worth of the porch was the view of the old mesquite
And the hollow back of the wood stove lid
She filled with clear water for jewel-feathered
Neighbors who fluttered down to take a pure, clean drink.

Granny tolerated the kid’s traps
That caught vermillion and indigo
With white wings and top knots four at a time
But she somehow saw they all got to fly away, minutes from the capture.

So we all knew the Birds of Texas
As did Granny,
Reciting names like Passerina and Geococcyx
For painted buntings and road runners

It’s years since anybody put water out
Like Granny did;
Those last few mesquites were chained down too,
When the hunters went crazier and bought the whole countryside.