Curtis is originally from the Lone Star state, the town of Big Spring. He purchased this pencil drawing by artist Billy Hicks close to 40 years ago in West Texas. The pencil drawing is dated 1975 and is #58 of 100. The scene features a saloon owned by Judge Roy Bean. The eccentric judge was a famous saloon-keeper and Justice of the Peace in Val Verde County, Texas. He called himself, "The Law West of the Pecos". According to legend, Judge Roy held court in his saloon along the Rio Grande on a desolate stretch of the Chihuahuan Desert of southwest Texas.
Poem by Curtis Beaird
West Texas
Looks like God's country to me.
Land of the Sky. Roughnecks. Swampers.
Brick Layers and Journeyman Electricians.
Red Ford Pickups.
Odessa. Midland. Big Spring.
A Basin they call Permian and an Oil Refinery that lights the horizon in the night like the edge of a rising moon.
A BBQ pit made of red brick. Mesquite wood. A sauce that begins with a six pack of Coors.
Plenty on the plate and more where that came from.
Home made ice cream. A two gallon freezer of it, hand turned with a crank-wheel combo that looked like it was snatched from a Mac truck.
Room and plenty of it.
Space to move and think. Windmills that needed the leathers changed.
Water, lifted, pure, clear and cold as if from a mountain spring.
White-faced Herefords. Wind. Dry. Hot.
Doves over the tank at sundown.
The Milky Way studied from the back of a pickup truck.
Prairie scrub turned yellow gold in the night from the flaring of natural gas in fields dotted with drilling rigs and pump jacks.
Prickly Pear, Tumbleweeds and a Century Plant reaching for the sky.
Yep, looks like God’s country to me.
You can see forever.
Copyright 2015, Curtis and Norma Beaird. All rights reserved.
