Amok in Texas

We're visiting the Lone Star State for the first time -- spending time with family who moved to Dallas a few months back. Spent a morning in lovely Chisolm Park and found a letterbox (our first!)

Since it's National Poetry Month, I've been wondering about Texan poets. The state has a long standing poets' laureate program. The current poet laureate of Texas is Larry D. Thomas. His webpage has some amazing poems -- love the sensory details, his attention to landscape.

Because we were just with the park with my young niece, here is Thomas's poem, "Out of the Blue" --

Out of the Blue But for the three of us, the park that day was deserted. Mom meant no harm and said she was just kidding when, out of the blue, she sped off in the Buick and left me and my little brother stranded on the blanket we’d spread for a picnic. Beyond the elm-shaded acres of Cole Park, in far West Texas, the flat red earth ran unobstructed for miles in all four directions all the way to the horizon. Sam clutched his teddy bear and started crying. I stood in my white, suspendered shorts and watched the car dissolve in a cloud of dust.

Read the rest of the poem here: http://www.larrydthomas.com/poems.htm. You might also like the humor in Thomas's "The Red Raging Waters," which can be found on the same page.

While they're having freak 1-minute blizzards back home in Charm City, we'll be enjoying the 80 degree weather here in Dallas. See y'all!