Don Quixote de la Mesa

Don Quixote de la MesaFlying across West Texas
down country highways
and I-20, I was lost.
I had missed a turn.
Invisible towns flashed above
the dashboard as I floored it,
the odometer spinning
as if my Toyota were cruising
through outer space.

Flying across West Texas,
I cut an unwavering swath
through scorched scrub brush,
blackened trees and grass,
skeletons, souls frozen in hell,
arising from the red furrows,
parched creek beds and draws,
the horizon misty with smoke.

Flying across West Texas
I circled old town squares,
shabby abandoned houses,
barns, and restaurants
boarded up and leaning west,
the cemeteries more populous
than the posted city census,
the lonely wind howling and
my fuel gauge on E.

Flying across West Texas
I saw not a soul, the cotton
bolls all picked and ginned,
and those left behind like
snowballs in briars resisting
the afternoon heat.

Only a trickle of cars
and semis pushing 90,
crystal beads in a rosary
in front, back and side of me,
flew through that desolate
landscape that yearned
to be pitied by mountains
or cradled by green hills.

Buffalos, cattle, goats, llamas,
and sheep sprawled in
sparse knots looking for
shade, indifferent to the
three-second tourist.
Barbed wire enclosed land
as flat as Columbus's
worst nightmare while
dusty roads in straight lines
merged into the sky at the
vanishing point.

Flying across West Texas
suddenly I saw giants erupt
from the earth, towering monsters
all menacing arms and moaning.
First, just a few, then dozens,
hundreds, maybe thousands.
Was this Texas, La Mancha or Mars?


Flying through West Texas,
where the oil rigs buck like metal
broncos, electric bulls or Clavileño,
I wondered where all the knight errants
were to pledge their undying love
to their Dulcineas and tilt at those giants
to save this land and restore harmony.

And where were all those practical
Sanchos, squires to remind those
Don Quixotes this was West Texas
and that evil doers were elsewhere
and those giants merely windmills.

Nancy Membrez