Sea of Texas, The

Hudson Review, The, Winter 2003 by Logan, William

You walked across the dusty Texas sea,

or what looked like a sea-raw, cracked, the sea of doubt.

The half-moon reared. A ground-down, out-of-work mesa

had slumped beside it, sleeping or feigning sleep,

exhausted by the silence, the din of silence.

Spotted grasshoppers buzzed through drying weed.

A wire fence-line rode the mesa's back,

as if to say that it, too, had somewhere else

to go-and off it went. You were a vision,

shimmering down the lanes of prairie heat,

where late in spring the breeding crawfish swarmed.

Their skeletons lay bleached on the red crust,

like overturned hulls of tiny abandoned boats,

each oar a broken toothpick.

And there you were, closer, two steps closer,

taking your time, what time you had, strolling

across this dust bowl on a dried-up sea,

where each pale glaze had opened up a sluice

down to barren seas below. When did you know

you never wanted a baby of your own?

published in 1999 by Jonathan Cape. . . . WILLIAM LOGAN's forthcoming book of poetry, Macbeth in Venice (Penguin), will be published next summer ... A selection of STUART HENSON's poems