A Poem for Buffalo Bayou from Larry D. Thomas, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate

Jan. 6, 2015

Buffalo Bayou

Great blue heron tracks in the mud on Buffalo Bayou. Photo by Jim Olive

Great blue heron tracks in the mud on Buffalo Bayou. Photo by Jim Olive

(Houston, Texas)

Great trees grow
along its banks,
meshing their branches

high above it,
sparing it
the bright intrusion

of sun, moon, and star.
Great blue herons
ripple its shallows,

spearing frogs and minnows.
Within its murky
depths, the big gars flourish,

unscathed by toxins
and the bloated corpses
of poisoned fish,

working their gills,
fins, and tails,
snaking their passage,

oblivious of time
and its irksome,
futile ravages.

Larry D. Thomas lived in Houston from 1967 until 2011, when he and his wife moved to Alpine, Texas.  An award-winning poet and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he has published twenty-five collections of poetry. A major new collection, As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems, will be published in Spring 2015 by Texas Review Press, a member of the Texas A&M University Press Consortium. It is available for pre-order at Amazon.com.

“Buffalo Bayou” was first published in Literary Houston in 2010, a collection of historical and contemporary writing about Houston edited by David Theis and published by Texas Christian University Press, Fort Worth, Texas.