y Tejas

Out beyond the door and walls

Thunder and Dust

Lies the land of a hundred men

And a thousand yearning boys

Whose only true faith would rest in The Border

This is not God’s country

It is the legends that retain the believers

For the true believers are the legends

Rancheros, Vaqueros, Desperados, Banditos

This is their expanse

Along the roads. Along the trails

Alejandra rides

Sunset shadows are long

In the rose and waning light

Like a dream of the past

Riders of a lost nation

Belonged to what no other had dared to conquer

Where they lost themselves to be found

What was their was redeemable alone in blood

And blood was all anyone could prove to be

In a life not destined to endure

Alejandra knows

Sunrise to sunset

All the land the sun touches is hers

And yet it is the land that owns all who touch it

She stops out at the end of the mesa

The red wind on her cheeks

Coppered by the sun

Of the lifeless plains

Walking out, as if to the end of something

She looks beyond and below

Until the land touches space

For between her and infinity

Lies a forgotten microcosm

She steps out and flies

The gusts from the west

Carrying the earth and

Alejandra

And the horses

Thunder and Dust

To keep the ghosts alive.

©2001 Jennifer Davenport