the song of my childhood. Her voice in the wind
tells of raven-haired niņos at play in the Valley,
the landscape of ghosts that shelters Big Bend.
In the Chihuahuan Desert west of the Pecos
her call is the coyote's moonlight refrain,
the breeze through the cholla, the sagebrush, the yucca.
She sings in the tumbleweed sweeping the Plain.
Her music is polka, bluegrass, mariachi,
and Blind Lemon Jefferson's blues. It's the blend
of Willie and Waylon in Lukenback, Texas,
Van Cliburn in concert, UT's marching band.
At a water tank ringed with mesquite scrub she whistles
through prickly pear thickets and rocky terrain;
she hums in the rails of the Southern Pacific
where a phantom blue yodeler waits for a train.
She's a basso profundo in Longhorn Cavern;
her tympani rumble in Galveston Bay.
She's a lonesome guitar in the streets of Laredo,
a chorus of hundreds at TCDA.
She sang to my infancy, rocking my cradle
with bluebonnet symphonies, drumbeats of rain,
sonatas composed by the Pedernales.
I've come home to listen to Texas again.
I will sing in her dancehalls, cantinas, cathedrals;
I'll sing the corrido, the hornpipe, the hymn;
I'll dance to her fiddles, her oboes, her cellos.
Texas is singing! Come listen! Join in!
Carol A. Taylor
2005