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Volume I, Number 1 (Summer 2006)
ISSN 1934-4324

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NEW-CUE

NEW-CUE, Inc. is a non-profit, environmental education organization founded primarily to assist writers and educators who are dedicated to  enhancing  the public's awareness of environmental issues.

 

 

 

Earl J. Wilcox

Earl J. Wilcox, a retired university professor and author of four books on Robert Frost, has published poetry in SOUTHERN GOTHIC, LUNAROSITY, THIRD LUNG REVIEW, STRANGE HORIZONS. An avid baseball fan, he writes poetry and fiction about the national pastime.

“I Want to live Forever, Learn how to Fly

Once Upon a Road to Derry

 


“I Want to live Forever, Learn how to Fly

       Johnny Cash had more demons, than most,

      excepting those who aspire to write his life

      in poetry. The time has passed from our culture

      when readers want poems by angst driven poets.

      Confessional verse is out of style, out of place.

      out of time. With JC on his mind, what’s a writer to do?

 

      Disguise the poem as if it were a lyric about Jesus

      Christ. Integrate into complex lines some richly

      textured symbols, mix with multi-layered tone.

      Tattoo into the text those forever famous initials

      charming readers to assume the song’s about 

      the carpenter from a little town somewhere in the Middle East                     

 

      If the poet is astute enough, rather than allusions

      to grapes, loaves and fishes, doves, temples,

      a nomadic family, or hints of a king and future

      kingdom, the poem could blend images of the

      American South. Country up the piece with cotton

 

      picking, mockingbirds, catfish, sharecroppers living

      in shotgun shacks, and family life in a little town in Arkansas.

 

      Who knew JC sang bass, wore black, got married, and played guitar?

 

Once Upon a Road to Derry

                        For Robert Frost

 

Some say September seems the best time,

a fallow month ripe with leaves and rime,

when seeds are shed, and autumn’s pall

reminds us faintly of that other Fall.

 

Walking paths worn down by summer seekers

bid us here to join all the leaf peepers

for glimpses of ancient trees and churches---

or you---amidst spires and arching birches.

 

Down lanes near Derry we search for brown

apple trees or by some fluke, your chicks,

long ago pluck’t bare by poets or rustics,

who little care that you would have known

 

they were trespassing on soil you might

have wanted to keep for a future hiking

trail or softball field.  It is our liking

you, whose words and sounds we know by sight,

 

your voice, calling from the pasture or lone

path deer may find in pairing off to mate,

or standing face to face with us when, late

from the world, we draw near you here at home.

 


 

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