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For anyone whose faith is ratified by
big churches, large congregations, massive crosses
this narrow wire one offers little consolation.
From certain angles
it isn’t even a cross but a thin green line
hovering over crisp new flowers.
Sunlight and grasshoppers pass through it,
flowing freely toward the ether.
Grief takes its turn
rippling the sky as it passes through.
Maybe a solid cross could have frozen the flight.
US 67/90
Presidio County, Texas
Like leftover Christmas, broken Coke and Topo Crico bottles glitter beside the long-armed cross, full of her many names.
A second cross disintegrates – shards of white satin ribbon droop, ever more brittle and yellowed, while tiny Styrofoam hailstones drift down from the cross’s body, to lie caught up in weeds and glass.
A broken fence post, struggling to do its job, points straight to the crosses.
State Highway 17
Presidio County, Texas
The sad-faced Jesus, hanging on his cross, has turned away from the road, the intersection, the airport. A faded Christmas wreath circles him, only one fake pinecone clinging to its plastic boughs. Nine whitewashed stones – a trinity of trinities – curve out from the base of the cross and just beyond the airport sign points out the way to leave.
State Highway 17
Presidio County, Texas
In the shadow of the craggy cross, a pair of long-neck beer bottles nestle together in the shade, like rabbits waiting out the noonday heat.
A fan belt circles the cross’s arms, a sharp-edged red reflector tucked into one end. Two pieces of broken mirror and a flat, chalky rock are carefully balanced on top of the arms. A crack in the belt will hang on for one more summer, maybe two, before it breaks through and the whole thing collapses.
Oxidized barbed wire is z-ed at the intersection of arms and upright, where two Carta Blanca caps are tacked, their red color slowly fading under the western sun.
A single railroad spike on the top of the cross shudders as the eastbound Union Pacific storms past, blessing the sacred aggregate of things left behind.
US 87
Presidio County, Texas
Maria and her children – Heber, Lynette, and Elizabeth – died against an elderly elm tree. Road-side darkened bark and melted asphalt suggest an inferno. It was Christmas Eve.
Employees of the McDonald’s in the next town put a sign on the tree, giving names and dates. In the years since the accident, Maria’s birth year has been amended and she’s now two years younger. A scrawled message from JR and JJ states WE LOVE YOU. The once-red sign has faded to a golden color. Items around the tree have vestiges of holidays: three candy cane ornaments, plastic fir fronds stuck in roadside tumbleweeds.
Above the sign a heart-shaped wreath, decorated with plastic roses and daisies, has been nailed to the tree.
Four flowers are gone.
US 67
Presidio County, Texas
