Come to the Bower

 

Battle of San Jacinto, April 21, 1836

 

Will you come to the bower I have shaded for you?

That was the song all four knew

after they tried “Yankee Doodle”—

the German from Aachen who blew the fife;

the black freedman who banged the drum;

the two Kentuckians in Sherman’s riflemen,

one who sawed a fiddle,

the other who wheezed on a mouth harp.

 

Our bed shall be roses all spangled with dew.

Houston smiled as they struck up the tune

when the thousand- yard line of Texians

crested the rise and Hockley fired

the Twin Sisters, blowing a hole

in the Mexican barricade.  The four played on.

 

There under the bower on roses you’ll lie . . .

Sherman shouted his own lyrics,

“Remember the Alamo!  Remember Goliad!

Remember the Alamo!” and the song

was joined by his screaming riflemen,

by Lamar’s horsemen, by Seguin’s Tejanos,

by Burleson’s First Regiment.

 

With a blush on your cheek but a smile in your eye.

Twenty yards from the barricade,

Texas rifles joined the crescendo,

in moments the cymbal clang

of bayonets and Bowie knifes.

Within minutes, the battle was won;

only sad strangled verses

in Spanish encored.

 

 

 

 

Chupacabra Occupies Wall Street

 

Out of deference to his colleagues

he does not eat them.  Also, they are

too much like sharks, frenzied on blood

even more than he.  Instead, when the sun

dips beyond Hoboken and the coin

of the moon repeats itself every ripple

of the East River, he strolls from the Exchange,

up Broadway, past Union Square, debates

catching the fights at the Garden,

continues on Sixth Avenue into Central Park.

 

In the City, with his dark hoodie

and Reboks, claws piercing the nylon,

he goes unnoticed.  At the park

he searches for food, first around

the Lake, but there are only geese

and deformed bullfrogs, a few

homeless under the bushes, but they

are thinner than the goats of Langtry.

 

No goat is on the air.  He retraces

his steps in deep thought as dawn

approaches, returns to his room,

puts on suite & tie, combs his hair,

and envisions his day on the floor—

colleagues and rivals, bleating

and yowping, eating labels off tin cans,

and he smiles for breakfast. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clarence Wolfshohl lives with his writing, two dogs and one cat in a nine-acre woods outside of Fulton, Missouri.  In late 2014, his chapbook Equus Essence was published online by Right Hand Pointing ), and most recently his print chapbook Chupacabra  by El Grito del Lobo Press (2015).