Familias de Terlingua
follow us
  • Las Familias
    • Remembrances
    • Memorials
    • Babb William Isaac
    • 1457 Ruiz de Temino, Alfonso
    • About Us
    • Links
  • Places
    • Area Counties
    • Castolon
    • La Coyota, TX
    • Fort Leaton
    • Gordexola, Viscaya, Espana
    • Lajitas
    • Terlingua >
      • Terlingua buildings
      • Terlingua Cemetery
  • Culture
    • Terlingua Traditions
    • Art
    • Customs
    • Language Information
    • Schools
    • Teachers
    • Education
    • Musica de Terlingua >
      • Lydia Mendoza
      • Los Barandales del Puente
    • Poetry >
      • About Poetry
    • Videos
  • History
    • Timeline
    • Inquisition
    • Sephardic Jews
  • Sources
    • Census Index
    • Immigration Records
    • Obituaries
    • Find Records >
      • Death Records >
        • obit Francisca G Acosta
        • DC Anastacia Cervantes
        • DC Antonio Franco
        • DC Refugio Manuel Franco
        • DC Rita Ramirez
        • DC Felix Valenzuela
      • Documents
  • Events
    • 2019 Easter Tour Info
    • 2019 Easter tour Talks
    • 2019 Easter Tour Blog
    • Terlingua Today >
      • Terlingua Today 2015 part 1
      • Terlingua Today 2014
      • Terlingua Today 2013
      • Terlingua Today 2012
      • Terlingua Today 2010 & 2011
    • Meetings of Interest
    • Reunions
    • What Was New >
      • Whats New 2016 2015 2014 >
        • What was New in 2013
        • What Was New March 2010?
        • What Was New April 2010
        • What Was New May 2010
        • What Was New June 2010
        • What's New Archived
  • Books
    • Books Non-Fiction
  • Ferdinand I King of
  • Alfonso VI King of Castile y Leon
  • El Cid Rodrigo Diaz
  • Alfonso IX King of Leon and Galicia
  • Cristobal de Valderrama
  • Chavarria
  • Muñoz Pascual
Picture


Poetry -

Words that breathe life back into old Terlingua


The stones of Terlingua are Silent
by Dr. Jalapeño Schwartz
Picture
The words above were used by Dr. Jalapeño Schwartz to tell a friend the value of the websites "Familias de Terlingua" and "Life Before the Ruins." He notes that the past has so faded with the departure of the people, until today the past is not readily visible in the stones of the ruins that remain. 

His kind and wonderful words just sounded like haibun, concise Japanese prose-poetry. So we got his permission to place it in our "Welcome" page.  As we initiate this poetry page it seems fitting to include it here as the first poem.  Above, his words stand among the stones which once were the home of Severiano Chavarría at la Coyota.



El Solitario
by Darla McBryde

Read About the author
Among the candelia and ocotillo,
there is a spiraling tantrum tossed terrain,
with the scent of wild mountain cat on the wind
where the heart is a galloping horse
where the heart is a geode with the desert beating inside.

Ancient caldera, once a fertile womb of sand and mud,
The earth shook as your children were conceived of lava
now lost and buried among sun baked thorns and cinnabar veins,
eons of bleached bone weave strata and fossil,
the crushed skulls of the ancestors are pinned like butterflies.

Lonely one,
the stars gather over you,
some nights the hand of God reaches down,
runs His fingers along the circles of your moonlit ridges,
dips into the Earth’s marrow
traces the labyrinth.
_

© Darla McBryde- published in Cenizo Journal

Picture
Click on image to enlarge it.
Learn more about this work

A gourmet offering for El Día de los Muertos 2012
Ofrenda
by Darla McBryde

  I am in the mood for mole
hot chiles and warm rich chocolate

I want to skip barefoot
through starlit stone gardens
with a big sugar skull grin
on my fandango face

Cover my bones with marigolds
Worship at my altar

I will pen little calaveras con amor
for todos los bandidos muertos
A todas las mujeres nos encantan
los muchachos malos y guapos

Let me be your Catarina
Dance with me on my grave

I will bring the tequila
You bring the limes

I am in the mood for mole
hot chiles, rich chocolate,
more.

© Darla McBryde
Picture
a 1910 zinc etching by Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada
Picture
Poster by Craig Legg
learn more about this work

Dia de los Muertos 2015

Picture
Picture
An Unconscious Ofrenda
By Darla McBryde
and Antonio S. Franco

 
What is a day, a week, a month to the dead?
A year is a second. A month does not matter.
Time haunts the living.  The dead do not see it.
                                          
The dead know nothing
of the long hours before the veil thins
El Rio Bravo loosens the locks on the border,
shifting a bit to the north, a bit farther south,
eventually blurring to muddy memory.
 
Marigold petals and Monarch wings
woven in the Chisos' floating dreams
make soft orange blankets
conjured to cover the timeless dead.
 
Under this charm the Day of the Dead wakes.
In a long overdue reunion of blood and flesh
three brothers sit under the lazy eucalyptus and
rustling cottonwoods next to Terlingua Creek.
 
Along their way they had visited at their mother’s grave,
peaceful under the still marble angel wings.
Cigarette smoke wafts across the bougainvillea,
but no one is smoking in this grotto of descansos,
ghosts are welcome.
 
Their mother joins the Old Ones
eavesdropping on the brothers' stories
as once again their father walks the streets,
his bravado and swagger bigger,
more legendary, more alive than ever.
 
Three hearts beat as one.  Kindred blood flows through veins,
sacred conduit to what was, what is, what will be.
 
Sugar skulls bare their teeth in a knowing grin
while salt and tequila loosen tongues
to recount the tales that shaped the lives,
an unconscious ofrenda.
 
Ravens in full goth regalia invite The Bones to dance
as day trades the sun for night and moon.
Smoke from forgotten bonfires billows upward,
diffusing into the Milky Way.

 
© Darla McBryde
November 2, 2015
Alpine, Texas

Picture


About the Poetry
Discuss the Poems

This page was updated April 29,2013 with minor changes.
Picture

© 2012 Antonio S. Franco; all rights reserved except as noted.
For terms of use see "About Us."