Even when spring has sprung in Austin, and the wind blows everything around, many people are willing to tolerate these irritants – bug, pollen or otherwise – because to them, there’s no better place to be.
Delicious Irritant
chiggers, skeeters, fire ants
poisons oak and ivy
molds and pollen settle in
my tissue for to bind me
with itching, swelling, scratchy eyes
and skin and other fleshes
somehow we’re the grain, and it’s
the air itself that threshes
us with pestilential help,
now to mention how
the very sun itself will burn
the skin from off your brow
there’s bigots, blowhards, boojie bums
it’s all the price of Austin
they may live easier somewhere
but there i would feel lost in
so bring on the plagues of allergens
the biting bugs and hipsters
and raise a glass to old Austin
and say how much we’ve missed her
because some things,
at least
never change …
Produced by Laura Rice.
