To the Soft and Armorless

Vincent Hostak

September 7, 2025

after the Guadalupe River Flood, Central Texas July 2025

In a flood, everything loses the knowledge of the self 

and imaginings that the grip holds fast and firm.

The waters, no longer river nor rain,

grow thick and formless,

climb above their limestone banks,

pour over pebble toughened paths

to surge through nets of sleepy campgrounds and cypress trees.

When no design remains to deliver it to its intended bay,

its range leans every direction at once

its faith, a compass spinning wildly,

while blind current draws it southward.

Fish who’ve rarely met a dryland soul,

knowing nothing of their agonies and joys,

are caused to wonder:

What is this, soft and armorless, my fins caress?

Then in a pale flickering come the accounts:

ruined machines, mud and timber, porches coursing downstream.

What we are permitted to see and hear never held a heartbeat.

But where are they, the soft and armorless?

The counting exacts an awful balance:

add to one list, subtract from another,

using numerators abstracting souls.

The river will regain its singularity,

find the self we thought it once contained.

The fish will be content to know only

the ankles and toes cooling there

during another stubborn heatwave.

The soft break of swells against river rock

might tone to sooth us, or not, asking:

“What should you fear more- What you can now imagine

or that, as of yet, you cannot?”