There’s an old saying that Texas just might swallow the whole ****** world someday. Well it’s an old saying of mine but I can hardly believe the world ending without Texas swallowing a great deal of it considering these canyons, mountain-eaters, big enough to hide every cowboy snake and buzzard that don’t know any better.

The thing about Texas is you can’t see the end of things here and people call it big. The thing about Texas is everybody calls it something big when it’s really something stretched. Texas took a turn for the worse, warred with Mexicans in 1836 and never recovered. All that revolution, rusted muskets, wormwood, spilled into and on golden-brown cattle land, turned it dry-blood red. All that red, and Texas, she blushes. Texas, shy, ravaged, stretched. 1836 and she’s reaching for the Gulf and the East and West coasts and Montana and if we don’t fix it someday Texas just might swallow the whole ****** world.

One Spring I myself kicked around a little dry-blood dirt. By Summer I had my fill. There’s an old saying the only way to leave Texas is dry-throated and drenched, brokenhearted and better if you swing it the right way . 4 O’Clock Texan Suns scream thirsty yet we leave the place drowning if we make it at all. That’s the thing about Texas, though, it sneaks up, an axe and a smile and you can’t trust anything about it and you fall in love too easily and the thing is the axe doesn’t bite so much as knowing the handle came from the same forest you never questioned, where step 1 is breathing and you actually did it; the thing about axes though is that breath might still be inside the handle and it’s just sitting in there dead dead dead and heavy Pine.

Austin at night becomes a family of burning eyes in the desert.

Sun and trees, and it’s green.
I do not think these trees grew naturally.
I think these trees were put there.