It Reigns by Dennis Lange

……………………It Reigns

The sky is blue-cloudless, but still the sky rains,
Not water it holds, but the dust of the Plains.
The mist that is brown like the land, not the sky,
Now wearies the nose as it worries the eye.

The Plains are a table, as flat as can be,
And wind blows there often as careless and free
As stallions not stayed by a hand or a rein
Run wild o’er the prairie with high flying mane.

Now, north wind is blowing, both here and up there,
And carries its burden for others to share.
The distance it travels is three hundred miles,
And neither their faces or our faces have smiles.

For their land is blowing away from its home
And one day will leave them as bare as a bone,
While we are all suff’ring from soil that won’t stay –
It settles on hills that the rains wash away.

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© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2014.

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I Ate My Way Through Texas – a Texas tall tale by Dennis Lange

I ate my way through Texas
   One Christmas season past.
All it took was an appetite,
   And driving hard and fast. 

I breakfasted in Corpus;
   Ate lunch in San Antone;
Had peachy cream in Fredericksburg,
   The biggest ice cream cone. 

I darted up to Llano,
   And ate some barbeque.
I still felt rather perky
   As I drank some Mountain Dew. 

I snacked a bit in Abilene;
   In Snyder, I ate steak.
I passed on a second piece of pie –
   ‘Twas all that I could take. 

In Post, I drove through the Dairy Queen,
   Had a burger and some fries.
I began to see a line of food
   Rise in me to my eyes. 

In Amarillo, I chug-a-lugged
   Three liters of some coke.
I think it was the salty fries
   That made me a thirsty bloke. 

The Oklahoma border was
   Then not too far away.
And I was glad, for my stomach had had
   A fairly busy day. 

My car was tired; I’d driven far –
   Nigh seven hundred miles.
But I found a place, bought a root beer float
   And I was full of smiles. 

I had them fix a gallon
   Which I drank till Perryton.
And I paused to rest, with a sudden pain –
   Well… – there was more than one. 

I stood outside my resting car;
   Then faced toward Lubbock – south.
And all of a sudden I let a belch
   That blew off half my mouth. 

And I watched in awe at the wind I saw
   That blew down ‘cross the plain
And kicked up the dust and the tumbleweeds
   Worse than a hurricane. 

They said it turned the day to night
   The dust storm was so bad.
And the boom of the belch was an atom bomb
   (They thought, from Stalingrad). 

They had it rough, but the belch was enough
    To change me and my mood
I hit the border of Oklahoma
    In search of a little food.

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The route in the poem is from the Texas Gulf Coast
north through the Panhandle of Texas to the Panhandle
of Oklahoma, and is about 700 miles.

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© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2014.

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