Calvert, Texas

Calvert, Texas

You can get a good cup
Of coffee
At the brush break cafe
When looking out the window
Across main street
You can see where that first passenger got off
Glass eyed burning
With yellow fever
In eighteen seventy two.

Bringing a wrath
A biblical colossus
Of vengeful caprice
Deserved or not
They died
Some thrashing like the insane Hercules
Or passing knowing they were saved
Others died like animals
Spitting and rolling in the fire
Uncomprehending
Some peacefully passed on
Untying the earth’s strings
Visions from blown lace curtains
Passing like floral heavens
Over flaming brows.

The local graveyard
Has so many stones from that one year
Eaten by air and rain
Till sunk, skewed and sooty
They bow as you pass.
Some actually survived the sickness
Bodies fighting hard for life
And winning pyrrhic victories
Spending years in a miasma
Of bitterness for the life force lost.

The colossus still squats
On this town
And won’t let her up.
Energies stamped and rubbed into the soil
Won’t allow things to be made here anymore.
The paint peels on Indian red brick
Lays out landscapes
On weary walls
That no one recognizes.

Joshua Kight  7/3/06