Fishing in the Creek

The Catch

I used to take a short cane pole

and head out for the creek

where tannin colored water ran

like iced tea over white soft sand.

It pooled in bends or near felled

trees in deep black holes where

fishes hid.

With weight and hook

and wiggling worm

I’d drop my line and watch the

bobbing bobber disappear

when fish would bite

and take their flight to

wrap my line around some

hidden snag.

Dennis Price

Adrift

I lie adrift in an azure pool

with arms out stretched

in weightlessness

and shut my eyes behind

my shades

and gaze through eyelids

red with blood at

changing patterns light and dark.

The sun bares down

from cloudless sky

gulf breezes slowly

turn me round

and I can feel

my skin turn brown

as afternoon slips into night

and with it every troubling thought

fades on the gentle swells.

Dennis Price

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.  - Brendan Gill

Hauling Hay

Hauling Hay

I was a teacher

my salary was meager

I spent the summers

hauling hay.

The Texas sun

was searing at dawn

when I rose to see

if my hay truck

would start.

I climbed in the cab.

looked at the ground.

The truck had no floorboard

just blue smoke and sound.

The hay fields were strewn.

Square bales of alfalfa.

Heavy to lift,

tough to inhale.

We stacked them high

on the flatbed behind us.

One hundred and twenty

at twelve cents a bale.

We made for the barn.

A loft with no air flow.

Sweating and stacking

and swatting the wasps.

The scene was repeated

as long as the sun shone.

Then we, and the truck

coughed our way home.

Dennis Price

It Has Been Dry

My wife and I spent the week in Dallas, Texas last week.  It was HOT, and in most places extremely dry.  Texas has been suffering over the past few years with extreme drought and hot temperatures.  We are accustomed to hot weather here in the lower Texas Rio Grande Valley, but nothing like what we experienced in Dallas.  The temperatures were over 105 degrees everyday we were there.  The newscasters did some heat readings on black asphalt and dark colored vehicles and got readings in the 130 to 145 degree range.  We were glad to get back to our variety of summer heat here in the Valley.  Our temperatures are tempered by the breezes that reach us from the Gulf of Mexico.  We could use some more rain here, and I'm sure the farmers are praying for some now that the cotton crop is in.  I wrote this poem during a period of drought some years ago.  I could use a rain in the literal sense and also metaphorically in a writing sense.

God’s Symphony

The land is parched and dry

beneath the summer sun

and one might question,

why its been so long since rain

has spattered softly in the dust

until the droplets blend

in numbers large enough to

soak the crust and run in rivulets

steaming in the heat with

pitter, patter beat

backed up by lights

behind gray clouds

and roar of distant tympani?

First pianissimo, then forte

as the lightning cymbals crash

and drum roll thunder shakes

the core.

The howling wind joins in

for harmony and takes the

movement down to pianissimo

once more

then fades to blue.

Dennis Price