The Little Towns of West Texas

know all the roads go somewhere else

and never come back. They know

Heaven is directly above them

and from it comes great suffering.

In their fierce localities they suffer

without complaint. They believe

in their names and in the Holy Ghost

whose tongues of fire surround them.

They are covered with cotton silt,

insulated from the cold and the world

as if wearing a coat of frost all year.

They are mirages of mica shimmering

in the distance, moving always ahead

of the traveler. No stranger

can enter them, no native can leave.

Their seasons are summer and winter,

the hot wind and the cold. Spring

avoids them and goes a different way.

At night the wind spins them upward

into the darkness. At dawn it drops them

back to earth in no particular order.

If a house is found closer to the road

or at a different angle, nobody notices.

The horizon is always the same.

The wind flays everything equally.

Near the graveyards of the little towns

of West Texas beer cans are crucified

on fence posts and shot full of holes

The wind plays them like flutes. Coyotes

answer with voices that could wake

the dead. But the dead sleep on,

having everything they ever wanted,

a cool, dark place to rest where the wind

cannot rattle the lids of their coffins

and the sun no longer torments them.

Their mouths are pale crescent moons

drawn down over teeth they paid for

and intend to keep. They await

no other transfiguration, having heard

a voice roaring out of the desert

and it was not a comfort to them.

Now they sleep without dreams,

rocked by the rhythm of the pump’s

heartbeat and the faint susurrus of oil

sliding like from beneath them.