Two Poems By W.K. Stratton

ROMANCE

 

This trip you drink Pacifico beer
And Maxwell House coffee.
You reject her tricked-up cocktails
And designer beans from Ethiopia.
You feel at ease in Gulf fog,
Hydrozoans at your feet.
You rejoice in her being
Three hundred miles removed.

Later you joust octogenarian
Ornithologists with camera lenses
The length of your forearm
To obtain uncluttered vision.
In reeds seventy yards distant
Stand two whooping cranes,
Refugees from wildlife preservation.
You cannot know if they will survive.
But you are at one with these birds
In sour estuary air. This is romance:
The only love that can be trusted.

____________

IN BRUSH COUNTRY

 

Nothing is painless here.
Even rattlesnakes suffer
In this mesquite.
Good jobs come from
Drilling and fracking.
And injury to earth and flesh
Abounds — the ancient sorrow.
You move through diesel showers
At the truck stop near Three Rivers
Then buy a Buffalo Outdoors brand
Rig driver work jacket.
It becomes your holy vestment:
With reinforced elbows it is
Ideal for welding and genuflection.
Holier now than you ever were
At Betrayal Creek,
You step out into Interstate wind.
You are reclaimed and authentic.