THE WORLD WITHOUT END IS ENDING
POEMS OF THE MIDNIGHT HOUR
BY
ROBERT WHERRY
COPYRIGHT 1993
LAKELAND FREE PRESS
CORNER OF MAIN AND BROADWAY
I watch myself
A bright red fireplug
Upright and permanent
Corner of Main and Broadway
Cars growl past
Exhausts spewing
Reminders of passing
Shoes pace
The concrete desert
To token destinations
Voices
Echoing an endless litany
Of
Hello good-by, excuse me
Buy me, sell me
World without end
Waiting for my moment of
Glory
As I stand at attention
Corner of Main and Broadway
URBAN RENEWAL
A dog of another color
Ambles over the red brick road
Followed by
A freckled boy
in tattered blue jeans
And shirt
Feet bare
A rusted Ford
Resolving to run again
Waits on metal rims
A faded blue pickup
Bares all
Amid broken glass and
Torn metal
A broken down sofa
And matching chair
Highlight the
Tangle of weed-infested yards
Amid the wasteland
Scaling paint, sunken roofs
And boarded windows
A black and white
Silently observes
The vapor
Of the dream
A bright white house
Red roses shining like torches
Waits
For the return
To glory
WINTER SUNDAYS
Sundays, my Father
Walked briskly in the early morning cold
Heels crunching on the frozen grass
And describing his early life of
Shoveling coal for little pay
Oranges only at Christmas
Life without electricity, running water
And money, while I
Walked with him
And dreamed of a future
Of thundering red Corvettes
Travel to beaches and mountains
And plenty of money
Sunday afternoons
He listened to classical music
During his after dinner nap
Dreaming of the good old days while
I listened to the Orange Blossom Special
And the Black Mountain Rag
Captured crooks
With the Hardy Boys
And dreamed of fiddling
With Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys
Dilemmas
In the magical kingdom
Of life
WHAT THE QUILT KNOWS
With its
Red, white and blue squares
Solid and respectable
Pink spirals
Crawling
Toward black borders
Intent on irrelevance
White spheres
Besmirched by
The years
Visual vanities
Crafted
Out of colors of the psyche
Knowingly wrapping itself
In the starched propriety of
Respectability
SHE
She kindly broke his wings with an honest
answer
And with rejection broke his winds of hope
Her sudden laughter broke the wings of his dreams
As memories broke the wings of the moment
Than the clouds broke the mood of the day
SEAS OF CHANGE
Where mountains
Rise from the smooth skin of earth
Where glass eyed lakes
form glittering images
Where valleys wrinkle
the face of the earth
There intrudes the symbols of childhood
A steel-eyed Indian, in harmony with nature
Lewis and Clark
mapping the destruction to follow
There, in the wilds of Idaho
Calling me
I dream of endless trees
A life without care
Part of me lives
For the full moon rising
Over the mountains
Reflecting on the water
Alone with my thoughts
Part of me wanders in
a world without people
And has reached the bottom
Where I live in
a sea of change without change
PORCH MAGIC
The porch
Surrounding the house of our yesterdays
Elaborate architecture of wood
Flat as the Kansas prairie
The rotting
Unpainted boards
Became elaborate cities
With high rise office buildings
Freeways, parks
And people
Surging seas with warring ships
Peg legged pirates,
Feuding on the stormy water
Burying gold coins in wooden chests
On small deserted islands
The badlands teeming with desperadoes
As we rode in
Beat the bullies
And loved the ladies
Rejoicing in our shadow lives
In the blazing summer sun
The reality of the porch was,
Cool nights
Sleeping with the dogs and the cats
A shady spot on a hot summer day
Twisting on the support poles
Intoxicated by the motion
Of reality
Good as the myth
HAIKU
Spring dissolves into
dusty dry red pictures
of ordinary death
winter arrives as
a glittering and guilty
victim of summer
patterns of green lurk
in trees, visual systems
of an early spring
birds, brightly colored
trill songs, desperate homage
to slumbering sun
DREAMS OF YOUTH
Living in the present
Life,
A never ending song
Of highs and lows
Old age
A foreign place
Never to be visited
Like a never present tomorrow
Hearing the sweet songs of Spring
Dissolve into
The sour dirge of Winter
Visual fading
As the years
Stain the colors of
Dreams unfulfilled
Like a sunset, swallowed by the dark
Touching
The rough dry form
Of the wrinkled replica of life
The roughness of the years
Like hardened bark on a tree
Tasting the my
Of sour
Shattered success
And bitter
Tattered dreams
Hearing the cheers of youth
Turn to the jeers of
Retrospective thoughts
The redundant musty odor
Of wasted time and opportunities
Like the muddy river, never
To be the ocean
DAYBREAK
Yellow light,
Fractured by the shades
Filters into the room
6:50 a.m.
Sleep collapses into shrilling alarm
With silky voices
Into reflection
Of plastic answers
Brain foggy
Dark emotions
Dreams, now
Exposed to light
New decisions
The new day
Hits my face
Like cold water
Day breaks
Into the glass of light
Cold water
Hits my face
New day
New Decisions
CELEBRATION
I celebrate
The first jolting cup of hot black coffee
Lake a blade cutting through the fading dreams
I celebrate the ritual of
Lifting weights of iron
In the middle of daily chaos
I celebrate the surprise phone calls
The morning mail,
A letter or card arriving
Like a sudden unexpected gift
I celebrate the cherry pie
Delightfully red and sweet
A marvel of perfection
Amid the routine of ordinary
I celebrate the twilight
And all stars defending the settling
Of darkness
