Bluebonnets bloom with azure certainty
of winter’s end. It’s only January.
What prompts this change of temperature and fate?
Soon, the tickseed follow with their golden
petals that foretell the coming sun
as the hyacinth river starts to froth
at the mouth. It’s coming—redbuds burst
into vibrancy, the plum trees heave
a sweet exhale that bring the bumble bees
whose buzzing eases April into May.
Last year, the laurels hung their violet blossoms—
an offering, a sacrifice to summer.
But nothing holds it off: the salvia
slice into the prairie. Brown-eyed susans
watch from their slender towers made of stems,
swaying in the ocean breeze that rattles them
and rattles me. The horsemint are the last
to come—they fill the fields of last year’s wreckage
their snowy petals waving like white flags
to the coming months of hurricanes.

About the Author
Katherine Hoerth is the author of four poetry collections: Borderland Mujeres (SFA University Press, 2020, forthcoming) The Lost Chronicles of Slue Foot Sue (Angelina River Press, 2018), Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots (Lamar University Literary Press, 2014), and The Garden Uprooted (Slough Press, 2012). She is the 2015 recipient of the Helen C. Smith Prize for the best book of poetry in Texas and the 2017 Langdon Review Writer in Residence. Her work has been published in numerous literary magazines including Summerset Review, Valparaiso Review, and Southwestern American Literature. In 2017, Katherine joined the English and Modern Language department at Lamar University as an Assistant Professor of creative writing and Editor-in-Chief of Lamar University Literary Press. She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and lives in Beaumont.