I am fueled by wanderlust. It has carried me to foreign lands and across North America, but also throughout my home state of Texas: 268,500 square miles, a landmass larger than any nation in the European Union. With its ten distinct ecoregions and a culture shaped by immigrants from more than 100 countries, Texas continues to surprise me. I never tire of exploring its landscapes, its history, and its many secrets.
This is the fourth poem in an upcoming book, Visions of the Lone Star State. I hope you enjoy it!
The San Antonio Missions
29.3601582° N, -98.4802383° W
The Alamo is famous,
its storied battle and limestone facade
as familiar as John Wayne’s face.
But along the San Antonio River, four quieter missions
endure beyond the traffic and souvenir shops.
At Concepción, I stand beneath twin bell towers,
looking upon a church little changed since 1755.
The roughhewn sanctuary of San José rises
above grounds where villagers once gathered,
Franciscan prayers mingling with native tongues.
At San Juan, I pass the whitewashed chapel, imagining
Coahuiltecan families tending orchards for distant markets.
Farther south at Espada, I pause beneath its three hanging bells,
then follow the old acequia to the stone aqueduct,
where centuries-old masonry still guides the water.
I see the Franciscans’ vision in every chapel,
but the Coahuiltecans’ labor in every stone.
Some came for refuge, others under pressure,
building a new world in the shadow of the cross
as the customs of their ancestors slipped away.
Through four missions, I’ve walked where generations lie buried.
The baptismal records preserve their Christian names,
bestowed as they entered a different faith.
But so many names once spoken by their mothers are missing,
lost somewhere between the ink and the earth.
