More Poetry by Robert R. Woods

June 24, 2013

  This is a poem of mine that is so OLD I didn't record the date of the original first draft. A Facebook friend asked me to create a visual for it, I guess because she liked the poem. I did a little bit of rewriting on it and changed the title from  Sitting On the Ledge to On the Edge.

On the Edge

 

… And there we were sitting on the edge,
oblivion blossoming above our heads
in periwinkle blues and reds.
Time was thinning out, running out.

A subtle scream could be heard

drifting through the lilacs,
where Mustang Ford and Cadillac
licked each other’s manifold covers
like filicide lovers longing for
this final storm to come and end it all.

My friends began to scatter
seeking shelter in the cluttered churches
where the always faithful worship
for the second coming of the dawn.

I’d been wondering, myself,

what the heck went wrong?
God’s garden once a virgin paradise,
a forest filled with green-boughed oaks,
suburban malls and manicured lawns,
soon to be churned to muddy spit

and dropped into the fiery pit.

 

There upon a urine sky
a bronzed groundskeeper coughed up
the last dead leaves from winter’s freeze,
and the four mower men of the apocalypse
prepared their iron hogs for one final, jolly jaunt.

… And blood, lots of blood, dark black blood,
settled on a dying moon. She, the moon,

had seen it all before, and much too soon
the butchering, the cries, the beggar’s spoon
held high: Please, kind sir,

might I have a little more?”

But I dally here with all this second guessing
when I should be tallying my sins
which have, no doubt, ran up a debt
much larger than my earnings.
But I’ll not seek redemption
for my chronic ills, the overdue bills,
my spiritual indigestion.

For I have loved this life far more
than I could ever fear its death to come.
Yes, I’ve loved this life far—

—rrw o6-24-13