Panhandle Yellow Dirt Poetry

Tumbleweed Smith of Big Spring is a newspaper columnist and producer of The Sound of Texas radio series.

Courtesy Photo

After graduating from the University of Texas with a degree in journalism, Wes Reeves of Amarillo got a job at a newspaper and wrote about Panhandle people.  Ten years ago, he started writing free verse poetry.

“I have a lot of inspiration,” he says.  “The people here and their stories are all still inside me, and it all came gushing out as a kind of midlife crisis, I guess.”

He grew up at Wellington in the southeastern part of the Panhandle and wrote about some close neighbors.   He recites a poem:

“Alvin Horton was a Banty rooster of a man with sandpaper hands and a singing grin.

Sick people looked for him because he showed up.

Poor people trusted him because he treated them like Jesus.

Little kids loved him for the Juicy Fruit gum in his pocket.

Alvin Horton loved Red Man tobacco.  He misused English but never forgot the sick, the poor and the least. 

Trudy Horton loathed tobacco and bad grammar.

But she hid Hershey kisses in a Quaker Oats can in the third drawer down.

Kids knew what was there because she let them in on it with flashing, secret, whispering eyes.

She made stewed turnips and chocolate pudding for Alvin to take to the sick or just plain hungry.

Trudy Horton would spread a feast for no good reason and wrap napkins around sweaty Dr. Pepper bottles and call it love.”

Wes posted some of his writings on social media and got good response.

  Someone suggested he write a book.

  “I did last year.  I call it YELLOW DIRT since Amarillo in Spanish is yellow.  I started it with this one poem.  It’s really about us, the people who live here now and the ones who came before us.  I call it TUMBLES. 

Yes, our years are tumbled up, mingled with those of the great bison, the men who chased them and the women who sanctified them. 

We are the hours of bumbling; cussing ox carts, the boy-faced farmers with their pious brides softly weeping,

The microseconds of finger jerking lariat throws, mule kicks to the head. We are the sons and daughters of ancient soils aching under a mocking sky drying and dying and rising again on the breeze.”