Two Poems by Rory Waterman

Lost Maples, TX

September 2022

The city seemed far away
after the too-far hike
in far-from-home outlands

of threat-concealing forest
coating thousandfold knolls.
Distracted, I’d lost the trailmarks

for an hour of focused panic,
then found one by a stream
(a distant copperhead stirred

sidling into absence
like it had never been),
and strode back to my car,

grateful and aware,
through miles of stunted oaks,
resinous junipers

(a stark monotony
of spice on lukewarm breeze),
and logs I’d not dislodge,

until a bar-gate brought me
truck-wide dirt-track, tethered
to an emptied parking lot.

Slumping, I clicked the lock,
sighed and felt alone.
The evening’s insect-grinding

had started. A low-slung mammal
slouched towards the dumpster,
striped tail flicking.

So I searched the map and found
a biggish nowhere town
between the Texan hills

and San Antonio –
a soft bed for tonight,
some neon restaurants –

and booked a room, then drove
down slick hill-rounding roads,
and throttled across a plain

of ranches, and it rained
as night filled in the sky.
The route was dull and long

but this was my kind of freedom:
a black unbending road,
country radio

(she done me wrong; beer;
mama; he done me wrong),
and a breadcrumb trail

of signs glowing only for me:
Uvalde 26,
Uvalde 5, Uvalde

CITY LIMIT Pop
15751.
Then UVALDE STRONG,

UVALDE STRONG, UVALDE
STRONG, UVALDE STRONG
stamped on flags through town –

perhaps a football thing
I’d never seen before –
then painted along windows

round the hopeless square,
its fountain (off) in a pit
of grime and fallen petals,

ringed by little crosses
and photos of the dead
not knowing they’d be marked

by clumps of sun-blanched teddies
toy trucks, charm bracelets
on smaller crosses, twisting

in breeze: newly-unloved
totems of love that has
no object to return it.

And notes: ‘I love you always’,
‘Fly high little angel’,
‘I pray your loved ones find peace’.

How beautifully we fall
pathetically short.
And two men on a bench

sitting quiet in shadow
(a lifted cigarette
brightening, subtle coughs,

a softly muttered sentence)
before those twenty-one,
at least until I’d gone.

Brighter Winter

‘Let’s try a walk on the fen’
you said. Right. Here we are,
headwinded, skirting squares
of dormant clods. Again

a slit through sodden black
stop-starts for a culvert,
its forked grille holding back
cans, fag packets, bags,

but not, not quite, thin water.
A heron rows against
the sky’s inchoate tide,
folds, drops the other side.

It’s seen all we have seen
this greyscale afternoon,
and now it’s all you notice.

You make me glad to do this.

Rory Waterman's fourth collection, Come Here to This Gate, was published by Carcanet in 2024. His next book, a blend of memoir, travel writing and literary criticism, will be Devils in the Details: On Location with Folk Tales in England's Forgotten County, published by Five Leaves in April. He is Professor of Modern Literature and Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University, and co-edits New Walk Editions. Website: www.rorywaterman.com.