These are writings that show my attachment to South Texas. They are also true and based on personal incidents.

EMOTIONAL NATURAL HISTORY

A Place

Attachment to place
Especially those I count mine
Keeps youth rushing back to touch this future.
Our place – south of here – south of most places
Didn’t seem that strange,
Especially not exotic, as I see it now.
I watched at ten years
When they chained down the woods
Trying to make it some prairie that never had been or could be.
Daddy cleared his fields with ax and grubbing hoe,
A careful slash and burn that matched human effort and nature’s rebound.
Most of the wonder of plants and animals around us
Didn’t belong to us
But to friendly neighbors.
That’s until Deer Money came into the equation
And proved the postulate that money trumps neighborhood -
We didn’t blame them.
Whatever the social and environmental evolution,
Then and now,
The ties and links to that place will hold me until I’m gone.
I track down every path and perimeter of that place, in my mind
And remember the times we had –
Mostly fun when you smooth back the periphery.

Caliche Cliffs

Think about where they came from
Where they went,
Where they’re going.
Has downstream always been thataway?
Where should we set the beginning of always?
Since we’re talking about caliche, we’d better remember
That limestone - made up by little squirmy things –
Was upstream from here somewhere.
So the hills and little mountains north and west
Sent some of their tops and sides down here
To wash into pools along with the sandy stuff
From some deeper source, scraped, ground, mixed
To a concrete of sorts,
Settling and sticking and building layers of graying, creamy white,
Not quite rock nor clay either - caliche.
This white earth makes good walls, if you saw it square,
Not letting it crumble, letting it set with its neighbors.
Then, too, it can be gouged and mixed with tar or what not
And made into roads.
Or, the rains can start pulling it down to the sea that laps further down now,
Taking away the ridges shoved up by some angry crustal shrug,
That snapped a caliche chalk fault line
From the piney woods to the long river that’s not where it was then.
You could call these fifty-foot-deep gullies canyons
Like the locals sometimes did – calling coyotes wolves in the same sentence;
Or you could get it right and just call it White Creek.
Of course not a real creek,
Because with that caliche and south Texas clays and such,
Springs don’t flow but when it rains for days,
And no creek keeps flowing without springs.
But to the point – the really wow caliche cliffs or bluffs
Are called Tecolote.
That’s Nahuatl for the monkey-faced owls we always watched for,
Dodging the cloacal flux as they burst from the holes
In the sheer pure white walls
That had just enough toeholds for scaling nearly to the top
To the black recesses so we could
Doodlebug around with little sticks through the vomited
Fur and bones of the tiny rodents that carpeted
The vestibules of the tecolote tunnels.
I think it’s still the way it was, this set of bifurcating trenches
Washed from the sides of worthless hills down to the dry creek and on to the river.
Generations past, its members mostly dead now,
Found it a cool , shady hiding place for romance,
But I never knew a girl from my day who would have walked through the white heat
To watch owls poop or to come home to brag about the seven-foot rattlesnake
Or the javelinas that chased us up that ravine where we found that big arrowhead.
Maybe deer hunters on the big leases get by there from time to time
To look down these curious barranquitas where no game of interest creeps.
Still, I’d like to see that crumbly old hole in the ground
From above and below while I can still walk.
Maybe some of my old brush roving buddies can get me in
And help me get back there.