Neches River

Neches River

It moves along the bottom
of Deep East Texas
like the minute hand over the face
of an antique grandfather clock,

turgid with its prehistoric
cargo of gators and seven-foot gars
waving their fins in utter darkness.
A wild sow

tests it with her cloven hoof,
takes the plunge, and heads across it
with her three terrified shoats.
Soon, in absolute silence,

it will swallow them whole,
smooth out the frantic ripples
of their passage, and flow on,
keeping as it has for hundreds of years

its turbid, lugubrious time.


Larry D. Thomas

Posted over on Pecan Grove Press