What the Sun Sees as It Rises
John Claiborne Isbell
It’s almost sunrise. In the Gulf, which lies
some sixty miles from where I sit, the air
is vibrant and marine. The pelicans,
slow winged, lift into it. Below them, water.
Light filters in to grey the sky, as if
spilt on a table. And between the Gulf
and Europe, daybreak marches on, above
the great whales as they travel and the wings
of aircraft flying overnight, above
the bow of trawler and of tanker lost
out on the flat Atlantic. What the sun
sees as it rises. It’s the time that light
will come to hit the palm trees and the fields
that quilt the land around McAllen – all
the barber’s shops, the taquerías, all
the morning traffic. I can see the sky
begin to pale above my neighbor’s roof,
a stone’s throw from 281. You might
just hear a stray dog in the neighborhood,
or see the grackles knotting and unknotting
as they head east to where the sun is up.
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Fliss: Greetings, John! And welcome back to Well Met, our 1st birthday issue. Hooray!
John: Well met and thank you for the welcome! Happy Birthday to Well Met!
F: Thanks, John! And here’s Word-Bird, with a little cake she has baked in the WM van mini-oven. We have celebratory tea on board as well, and party hats for this month’s excursion. Where are we off to this time?
J: Aha! Tea and cake and party hats, how pleasant! We are off to the Mexican border, just where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf.
F: How exciting, John! I’d noted the Gulf in the first line of your poem, but I wasn’t sure precisely where we might be headed. Now W.-B. is revving up the van in earnest, preparing to transport us to the Mexican border. I think you’ve mentioned you used to live in Edinburg, Texas. Is this where you’re sitting in the poem?
J: It is indeed! It’s a dawn poem, a sort of aubade. I taught there for some years.
F: Yes, 60 miles from the Gulf, we read. Perhaps W.-B. could drive us those miles? We’re quite keen on the pelicans, and if we start now we’ll be there just before sunrise.
J: Splendid! Off we go! The sun will rise over the water.
F: Hooray! A birthday outing! Well, W.-B. is revving away again, so it won’t take long. I imagine that, the closer we come to the Gulf, the more we’ll experience that ‘vibrant and marine’ air you mention. We can just make out the fields and palm trees now, perhaps? Is McAllen a town, John?
J: McAllen is indeed a town, and we shall pass through it on the way to the Gulf, past palm trees and fields aplenty, with citrus and sorghum, among other crops.
F: Well, this all sounds very pleasant! W.-B. is cooing. We appreciate all the descriptions in the poem. Are the grackles types of birds, maybe?
J: Indeed they are! A grackle is something like a long-tailed blackbird, though they caw like crows. On the other hand, their flocking in air is a magnificent sight.
F: Excellent! It seems the grackles are heading in the same direction as us, towards the east. I like the thought that they might be following the WM van, the way that seagulls follow ships.
J: Indeed! Perhaps in hope of a scrap of food, perhaps out of companionship, perhaps to guide us in our journey.
F: Yes; who knows with birds? While they’re flying overhead, let’s consider the metrics of the poem. This is pent, I think? And blank verse, chirps W.-B., helpfully.
J: You and W.-B. are quite correct! This is indeed pentameter, and unrhymed: blank verse, in short.
F: Excellent! Well, here we all are in the Gulf, and here are the pelicans too! Let’s clamber out of the van and have a picnic, as the grackles continue their flight overhead. Is the poem from a particular MS?
J: Indeed yes! This poem appears in a manuscript named Mile 2 West, the name of a country road we passed on our way to the Gulf, between Weslaco and Mercedes. It is all set in the Rio Grande Valley.
F: That sounds like quite a trip, John! We wish you well with the MS. Do you have any plans for future travels, future travel poems?
J: Thank you for the good wishes! In fact, we are thinking of making it to Southeast Asia while our vaccinations remain good. I suspect that might generate a poem or two.
F: How exciting, John! Well, as WM begins its second year perhaps we’ll look forward to publishing poems from your new Southeast Asia MS. W.-B. and I wish you and Rita the happiest travels!
J: Thank you very much indeed, Fliss and W.-B.! You would be most welcome to publish future travel poems!
F: You’re welcome, John! More tea and cake? Perhaps the pelicans might join us. Happy Birthday to WM!
J: With pleasure! Let us tuck in, I see the pelicans eyeing our picnic. Happy Birthday, WM!
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John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently residing in France with his wife Margarita. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018); he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Women Writers in the Romantic Age (April 2025), both available free online. John spent 35 years playing Ultimate Frisbee and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more!
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