“Texas”
by
David Berman
first published in Caliban #8, 1990
Along the inner stream I found a hive split open.
I was deep in the country, where they said
I would find swollen dogs and trees covered in dust.
I found a house with windows and a door.
Once a man stumbled into the barn with a fresh axe wound.
I let him clean it out with vodka, then he pulled out
a red gun and told me he was gonna put me in the ground.
The sound made a hundred crows rise out of the field.
I remember sleeping by the pond,
waking up to see crumbled bees on the lips of a brown dog
standing over me.
I just lay there
trying to measure the diameter of its eyes.
I used to think I went there for the everchanging scenery,
or for the way the days just pass away.
They had told me Texas sat on the land,
harvests and oil, ten dimes to the dollar,
one star,
but those aren’t the things I saw.
I couldn’t walk an unbroken line there.
The window sill was a frame,
the state was a house,
and the doormat was on fire.
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