In the parched path
I have seen the good lizard
(one drop of crocodile)
meditating.
With his green frock-coat
of an abbot of the devil,
his correct bearing
and his stiff collar,
he has the sad air
of an old professor.
Those faded eyes
of a broken artist,
how they watch the afternoon
in dismay!

Is this, my friend,
your twilight constitutional?
Please use your cane,
you are very old, Mr. Lizard,
and the children of the village
may startle you.
What are you seeking in the path,
my near-sighted philosopher,
if the wavering phantasm
of the parched afternoon
has broken the horizon?

Are you seeking the blue alms
of the moribund heaven?
A penny of a star?
Or perhaps
you've been reading a volume
of Lamartine, and you relish
the plasteresque trills
of the birds?

(You watch the setting sun,
and your eyes shine,
oh, dragon of the frogs,
with a human radiance.
Ideas, gondolas without oars,
cross the shadowy
waters of your
burnt-out eyes.)

Have you come looking
for that lovely lady lizard,
green as the wheatfields
of May,
as the long locks
of sleeping pools,
who scorned you, and then
left you in your field?
Oh, sweet idyll, broken
among the sweet sedges!
But, live! What the devil!
I like you.
The motto 'I oppose
the serpent' triumphs
in that grand double chin
of a Christian archbishop.

Now the sun has dissolved
in the cup of the mountains,
and the flocks
cloud the roadway.
It is the hour to depart:
leave the dry path
and your meditations.
You will have time
to look at the stars
when the worms are eating you
at their leisure.

Go home to your house
by the village, of the crickets!
Good night, my friend
Mr. Lizard!

Now the field is empty,
the mountains dim,
the roadway deserted.
Only, now and again,
a cuckoo sings in the darkness
of the poplar trees.

Scrounging local garage sales... near ten years past... I had found a flat, welded iron, rusty seahorse... 3 feet high... with a good seahorse shape and poise... edges welded and cut... after the haggle... twenty-five dollars..... perfectly added to my estate... covered rust in gold sheen... mounted upon a tree... to greet all comers... with a seahorse kiss!    
     Seller said it was made by the same artist... of the turtle lady statue... to be found in Corpus Christi!  Asked if I had seen it... my reply... No, but I liked the seahorse piece! He expounded... the artist... only had one leg... but was a surfer... well known for this trait... in Corpus Christi!  
     After I had mounted the seahorse... upon it's tree...I did an internet search... looking for anything about the one-legged surfer artist of Corpus Christi!  Found... nothing!  
     End of May, 2019... visiting my sister, Donna... we were wandering Corpus Christi!  She guided us to the surf museum... not knowing the story... of the one-legged surfer artist... creator of my mounted seahorse!  
     Girl at the front desk... Kyla... real nice and friendly... told her about the seahorse and questioned her... she didn’t know... she never heard of a surfer with one leg or the turtle lady statue!  Looking at us just a bit strangely... one legged surfer???
      Donna and I... started our stroll through the small museum!  Along the right side... stood a long row of surfboards... I’ve never surfed... but I was imagining trying it with just one leg!  
      Anyhow... I didn’t really stop to read or look in any detail at any of the exhibits until I reached the back... there was a glass case... which had a piece of simple letter paper...  8.5x11... taped to the front of the glass cabinet!  I started in reading the last paragraph...

     “Welch, 53, and his wife, Chelsea Louise, 23, died September 15, 2001, when their car plunged off the edge of South Padre Island’s Queen Isabella Causeway, which partially collapsed after a string of barges crashed into the bridge’s support pilings!

     Thought to myself... Wow... Who is this guy???  I jumped up to the middle paragraph...

     “Welch lost one of his lower legs in an auto accident in the 1970s, but he kept surfing with a prosthesis.  He wore a peg-like prosthesis at first, then got one with a foot.  He won the prosthesis division of the United States Surfing Championships on South Padre Island in 1998.”

     In the glass case was a welded metal sculpture of a beach scene... with waves, palm trees, and all!  The piece did have some resemblance in style to my seahorse sculpture!  Also, there was a picture on top of the case... of Harpoon Barry... striking a muscular, no shirt pose... in his tattoo shop... his torso covered in tattoos!  
    
     “It is said... he was on the verge of suicide after losing his leg. In one interview with the San Antonio Express News in 1992 he said;  "I may not make it to heaven, but you can be sure I made no deals with the devil to get where I'm at now, "  Looking down at his false leg stretched out in front of him, Welch said quietly: "It is a real empty feeling when you put one of these on for the first time, especially if you are an adult on your own. And your mama'a not there and your daddy's not there, and the people in the hospital tell you, 'This is the best it's going to get.  I made my first leg myself, out of Hi-C cans. I couldn't wait for my leg to get finished. I wanted to walk. I guess I got the idea from the Tin Woodsman in 'The Wizard of Oz.' That leg actually worked pretty well!”

     I had found my one-legged surfer artist!  I walked towards Donna... who was already half-way leaving the museum...  I hollered to her... she just had to come see this ... “I think I found the one-legged surfer!”  She had recently had partial knee replacement... and was hobbling!  She said if I was fooling her... she better not walk back all that way for nothing!! She came back to the glass case... we read through the letter in it’s entirety!  
     Then we went... and told Kyla at the front desk... she again looked at us again a bit strange... but then reluctantly left her post to go with us to take a look... she was then astounded!  Said she never knew about the one-legged surfer... although she had worked at the museum for several years!  Said there were also a couple metal sculptures... at the front of the museum... she thought were also done... by Harpoon Barry!  We took pictures of those also!  

In the letter we also read...

     “Welch had numerous tattoos and body piercings.  He wore a tiny 14 carrot gold harpoon through one ******.  That is how he got his nick name according to a friend, Scott Gangel.”  

     "I am a unique, self-made sensation!” he said matter-of-factly... in the interview with the Express News!  
    
     It's been 18 years since eight people died when South Padre Island's Queen Isabella Memorial Causeway collapsed... sending 11 people into the water below... four days after the 9/11 attacks!  A string of tow barges had struck the supporting pilings!  A section of the roadway had collapsed...
     I promised Kyla... I would donate my seahorse piece to the museum upon my death!  I only hope my death... is as grand as Harpoon Barry’s plunge into the Gulf of Mexico with his young wife!  Wonder what they were doing during the plunge... what was Barry doing... yelling Yippee Ki Yay... or Surf’s up... Dude!!!... maybe???  
    
Surfed waves on one leg
Young wife... crazy life... grand death
Harpooned by Barry

©  2019 Jim Davis

You're just a tiny bit minimalist in your own unique way
a white star I have to squint to see in daytime sky
not a Mercedes five point but a Nissan Micra car
you park neatly in a three point turn by my netsuke
and put a circular dent on my platonic furniture

Your two humble rooms devoid of any bold sculpture
except a fold-out table and a miniature bubble chair
and a futon for a bed which is troublesome to share
you draw the line at adornments but allow a wallflower

A bulb in a bowl is your ornamental garden feature
mealtimes a nibble on grated carrot celery cucumber
you run so long on empty you're an eco friendly teacher
stretching out the energy is a passion of my lover
engaging in lessons on sustaining a resourceful nature

Your shoes two pointe ballet slip ons easy to care
barely there g-string thin cotton underwear
nothing loud to upset your understated figure
slight as a pin drop your bottom's semi-derrière
sits so light on feet I'd swear you float on air

I rarely get to hear you come before you're in my hair
with a voice pitch high as a smitten kitten's purr
your upper reaches get a score sized single 'A'
nice when it fits into our schemes of feng shui

I carry your bundle home on the roadway rivers of light
yet you only burn one ray of candle power at night
born of scintillating atoms which flow along each vein
containing so much love without clutter in your frame
a brave star small as wings formed of minuscule wire
flutters in your eyes with minimal flare
but deep desire

So many shoulders rounded

softly, the moans always climb

to fall around every curve

following distant stretches

lost in the rhythm of rain

on a roadway far too long

for a poet whose muse sings

sweetly in the dark of night

from just beyond the sunrise

ALL things uncomely and broken, all things worn out
and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lum-
bering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the
wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the
deeps of my heart.
The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great
to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll
apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like
a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in
the deeps of my heart.

Lotus clouds oversee a Popsicle stick roadway,
between us only dirt that, like jellyfish, echoed away

A refugee of the Imperial Court once hid in the Zhongnan.
He survived in silk rags, and would ode The Way

Moss-haired men watch Magnavox in windows,
the evangelical salesman begging them not to toad away.

Across the street, near the top floor, a freshly-ex-student
sits at his desk in an IRS building, told five hours ago to code away

A face, topped with hot pink, brandishes her crop in a field
of signs, screaming at Wall Street's old way.

A yam of a man, braving his new home in the hills,
freedom from obligation, finds a stream to wash the woad away.

Along a country road, a man with a sandpaper'd
face counts his money, having just sold whey

Lotus clouds oversee a Popsicle stick roadway,
between us only a past that, like jellyfish, echoed a way

Twenty one years have given me many names.
Call me Kyle, or the others I've borrowed away.

The impetus
                     Of being
Always on the run
               Through pinwheel eyes
                              Those standing by
                                          The mystic roadway :    River
Blues yet to be brushed
                      or in blush
                           Of evening chill's breathing
a canvas like windows dreaming felt
All mindful
And chockfull O'
                              Wonder
Then ponder
                Yonder "window breaks"
                         Past the wilderness' sleep
Bone heavy wood
                             Umber earth

                             Past whoosh and rush of liquid
Folding on itself / a soundtrack

      Listen now
      Pedestrian be

Mindful of the cautionary whales
                                               Old Ahab’s yell
                                  Obsessions
                           Fears
                                   Or loathing.

If one is drowning in one's sleep
Look wildly
                  widely
                              Blithely
                                    Down river  
Or up there beyond finger's point
                      Sidewinder snake journeys
Until sky and below it
All meet

The distance
        Now only a line
                 Coalescing what is beyond
                      Our ability to see
Far and away
    Evanescent
         Effervescent
                     Ever after      
                             River.     Life.
Here we are
And proud
     The free spirit is fluent
           With the rapid rivers loud
                            Always on the run
Currents like a child's curiosity ...
How then,
When or why
                        does it end ?
Where do we go?
                    
Like most things existing,
           Will lead to the high art /
love's deep oceans...
          
We often forget to seek
                              And mind
                                     the sublimations/
                                                            d¬¬r­ift wood.
So then,
Begin with a dot .
A speck of dusk
                     A burst of light
                                        A starry sky,
pieces to mastering
                   Raging fragility of water

Liquid undulations  
                    Folding itself in / volumes

Or falling from on high
       A droplet cry

Then the lightning
                   (crash or bloom)
From the heavens
                                 like electric rivers
So brilliantly
                   Festoons

Where do we go (so low)
       There and here / underfoot /
                   Over north / southern sleep
                                   To oceans twilight deep?

Go wrapped or map-less
Or no.
            Up
                Way
       Up yonder
There up there
                    Everywhere
                    All without fear...
My heart like the river yearns
                 To go toward the sun
                       A flow /
                                     the beating drum
Always on the run
And
     Yet
            Still
                    Here.

So maybe I am crazy.
But the only things I'm crazy about
is loving you and wanting to be with you.
And ****, maybe I do want to escape
and get lost in a state that might as well
have been named for me.
I just want to find the beaches that
are covered in sea glass and see
the sunsets cities are named for.
I want to get lost in you to the
point where I never have to come
home for holidays.
I just know that this isn't
some **** fantasy.
This is college across the country
and this is you and me.
I need to be able to wake up
on the time zone clock I'm
already sleeping on and
find the one person
who I want to see every
day for the rest of my life
right there beside me
when they've been
so far away for too
**** long.

Dark clouds blanket the sky
Lightning flashes in her eyes
roaring waters run down her face
her only friend is pain
It follows her wherever she goes
She cries for someone to help her
yet, she is alone
She searches for relief night and day
for there has to be some way
At last, a door opens, stopping the rain
She's found a new path
a roadway of faith
The clouds drift apart
and sunlight pours through them
and down on her face
drying her tears and
erasing the tracks the had made
Her heart is brimming with hope
Her face filled with joy
She is a bird who's been set free
Pain is only a memory.