Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Tabatha Yeatts Here. Thank you for hosting. I know that Tabatha has been busy along with about forty other poets, including myself. We’re part of Laura Shovan’s February Poetry Project on Facebook. It’s been fun writing to a prompt every day.
I have been in San Antonio visiting my sister who I haven’t seen in at least two years. It’s been wonderful to see her. One of the highlights were homemade the tortillas we bought in a local grocery story. But there is more to do here than eat.
Today we drove down to the Alamo.
I read on a plaque:
“The limestone walls of the Alamo church are roughly 4 feet thick on average. Inside these sturdy walls the Texans positioned three cannons atop a 12-foot high elevated platform of earth and wood. . . . It was here that some of the final fighting of the Battle of the Alamo took place. According to an eyewitness, the last of the defenders continued to resist the Mexican Army from the “pitch dark” end of the Church.”
I have a lot of studying to do to get up to speed on the history. It’s complicated. But I gathered some background: that during the early 1800’s the settlers/immigrants who had come from all over the U.S and world to make a living in San Antonio, which at the time was part of Mexico, had serious disagreements with the Mexican government. This church was the settler’s staging ground in their fight against Mexican forces.
And where there is war, there are heroes and tributes to them. This is my sister on the lower left catching a picture of them.
There is so much I’d like to learn about Texas, and I hope to learn more. This part of the world is so different from where I live in Syracuse, NY, where it snowed this week. The temperature has been in the 80’s here this week.
To change gears, I leave you with two poems I wrote this week. I hope you like them. The first is about an old rundown house.
A NEGLECTED HOUSE Under the porch live a family of skunks. I see them out around dusk. Grey squirrels Have left their old home In the trees, for a chimney full of old eaves. The house is in shambles, the landscape’s gone wild but birds are at home in those brambles, It’s true it’s deserted in sad disrepair, but I wouldn’t say nobody lives there. ©Janice Scully 2023
The poem below is about the change of seasons, always my favorite time.
I’M MOST HAPPY in the Cusp between seasons— The cool Spring rain before the Summer heat, when Summer dons a cardigan for Fall. and Fall shivers into icy Winter. then winter dissolves into flowery spring. It’s these cusps I like the most, by far when the world feels most like a tuned guitar. © Janice Scully 2023
Have a great weekend. Thank you, Tabatha, for hosting Poetry Friday.
