Big Bend Literary Magazine

Alpine, TX Elm

by Marilyn Westfall

Photography by Matt Stevens

Alpine, Texas Elm

In winter, ice

grows on the elm

in bright spikes

and weighs down

branches like too

much tinsel. How

sharp it is, thorny

as mesquite,

delicate as glass,

white as a full

moon within

my reach.

Marilyn Westfall divides time between Alpine and Lubbock, Texas where she chairs the Ad Hoc Writers Group. She has published poetry, fiction, essays, and literary criticism. Her latest work appears in The Rappahannock Review and Evening Street Review, and is anthologized in Bearing the Mask, Weaving the Terrain (both from Dos Gatos Press) and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VIII: Texas.

Stevens fell in love with the rough landscapes of the West Texas desert some 30 years ago. Now living in the Big Bend, he feels extremely lucky to be wandering the desert through his work as a land surveyor, where every magical adventure brought on by the present moment nourishes his artistic vision and inspires his poetry, paintings, and photographs.