Take Your Time Coming Home, by Cleatus Rattan, poet Laureate of 
Texas for 2004–05, is a book that begins with initiation themes for the 
child and proceeds to initiation of the adolescent and college student 
and cowboy. Later, the poet tries to deal with the initiation to war. 
Finally, a prevailing theme is that of aging and death. The point-of-
view is from the aging to the aged, then from the point-of-view of the 
loved-one survivor to the attitude of the dying to the survivor. Nothing 
morbid—just a refreshing look.

    "Readers familiar with the work of Cleatus Rattan will find 
themselves once again swept up in his poetic magic as he moves 
smoothly through the memories of his life, from family to teaching to 
war to trading horses. Here is a man as easy in his Poet Laureate 
chair as he once was in the saddle; and I know how easy that was for 
him because I remember those days of cows and horses on his place 
outside Cisco. This is poetry of family and small-town West Texas and 
the people living there. It is as real as sun-bleached bones scrubbed 
clean by the wind."—Paul Ruffin, author of Here's to Noah, Bless His 
Ark, Castle in the Gloom, and The Book of Boys and Girls

My Time
You hold my hand that is yours
as I fall into the blue morphined haze of sleep;
I say to you dying people need to die
like sleepy people need to sleep.

Whirring machines may drown my words.
You never indicate you hear.
I may waste difficult words on you,
but I'd fail anything for you.

Perhaps I'll lose you by moving on
to a realm in the thoughtless dark, but
I want you happy far from this antiseptic 
air, looking for spirit somewhere.
 
If there is a mechanism for such things, God 
knows I'll wait. Take your time coming home.
—from the book

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CLEATUS RATTAN is Mayborn Professor of English at The University 
of Mary Hardin-Baylor. His book The Border (Texas Review Press, 
2002) received The Texas Review Poetry prize and was later selected 
for study by high school students across the state of Texas in UIL 
competitions in literary criticism. Rattan is the first living poet to be so 
honored. Rattan was selected as Poet Laureate of Texas for the years 
2004–05 and was cited as a Distinguished Alumnus of Texas A&M 
University–Commerce in 2004. National Public Radio interviewed him 
and asked him to read four of his poems for the second inauguration 
of President Bush. Rattan is a graduate of Southern Methodist 
University, the University of North Texas, Hardin-Simmons University, 
and Texas A&M University–Commerce.