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To the Waitress on 84 North, Just South of Eden

 


I try not to consider the ramifications of moving,

especially when it takes me from El Valle to Hub City. 


And yet, I can’t help but count the miles, revisit the route I chose.

It reminds me just how big Texas is. 


Ten hours later and I’m still embraced by its rivers, its hillsides,

its unending sky, thick and glistening like layer cake. 


Some small part of me is worried I won’t fit in, that here I am

– again – alone but not without my beautiful friends.  


Their messages reach me even through highways cut into earth,

even through the whale bone windmills lumbering along this dream.


I’ll miss the food, I say to whoever will listen. By this I mean the people,

the unrelenting sun that resides in them, their melodic voices near singing. 


Who can match their cadence? I could search from the bay

to the high plains. And just as the fear bubbles up


I stop at a small Mexican café just south of Eden.

I recognize something in her. And she in me. 


Mamas, she says, would you like a cup of coffee? 

And for a moment I’ve again found home. 


I can’t help myself, answer: Por favor.

Her reassurance, her hand on my shoulder. Claro, amor.


My landscape may keep changing but for a moment there’s joy

when claimed by a tender-voiced waitress, in a land that waits for me.








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Praisesong for the People

a project by Amanda Johnston 

2024 Texas State Poet Laureate 

This project is made possible with support from the Academy of American Poets, the Mellon Foundation, the Writers' League of Texas, and the Texas Commission on the Arts. 

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