Texas Tale
I went to Texas
and a town burnt down.
Believe it or not,
its name was Flat.
A poem waiting
to happen, I'd say.
Town with a name like
Flat just catching fire,
its scorched pines and pic-
nic benches crackling
in the noonday heat,
snapping into flame
like matchsticks on the soles
of some body's big boots.
It was a tall town,
Flat, before it burnt—
well—flat, and became
what it was meant to be.
Tall as a live oak
against the prairie.
Tall as a daughter
just before she leaves.
Tall as the Gulf Oil
sign at Wick Harney's
full-service station
at Main St. & First
in a small Texas
town that was once tall
till fire proved it proud
and cursed it flat.
One more Texas fact:
it never happened.
The town that burnt down
had another name,
one forgettable
and tragically true.
And I had nothing
to do with the fire.
But the poem came
anyway, a spark
some vague-eyed native
or half-deaf traveler
to Texas let drop
and laid to waste
a town that never
was and still is not
Flat as ever in the
level heart of Texas.
—Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
Posted by dwaber at May 14, 2007 11:55 AM