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You are about to come face to face with a Texas that has always been there, but that we don't take the time to see. The magnificent photos by Tommy LaVergne and the poetry of my friend Joyce Hardy combine to remind us of the stark beauty of this state. They remind us that in this age when only new seems to count, enduring things should never be discarded. Is there poetry in the commonplace and the mundane? The answer is a resounding YES that echoes from the Hueco Tanks through the sleepy main streets, out to the hard land and 'Stretches taut across the gaps of time and space' to finally settle into our soul. Hardy sees LaVergne's pump jacks 'like soldiers on a battlefield.' She sees his river and asks, 'What is it about a river that makes you feel eternal, connected to the past and future all at once?' She sees winter as a time when blasts of Arctic winds blow through thin barbed wire fences and 'leave a frozen necklace around the long, fair neck of the Panhandle.' This is a beautiful book, filled with artistic photographs and lovely poems evocative of a land that should not be forgotten. - Ron Stone, host of Eyes of Texas and Professor of Texas History at Houston Baptist University

JOYCE POUNDS HARDY is a native Texan, a graduate of Rice University, and a well-known Houston-area poet. Her work has appeared widely in journals and has won numerous awards. She is the author of two books. TOMMY LAVERGNE has been the official photographer for Rice University for the past eighteen years. His assignments have given him the opportunity to photograph an extremely diverse group of dignitaries and educators, including Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush, and Clinton as well as Henry Kissinger, John Connally, James A. Baker III, Colin Powell, Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Yassir Arafat, and U.N. Secretary Kafi Annan.