1920s Earthbound Boyhood without Apollo

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The people with their gilt have left their house

With boards across the doors.  The windows, too,

Are barred, but still the boy, a blameless mouse,

Can peer inside. One standing soldier, blue

His jacket, stares straight back from army lines

Arranged forever in the gloom.  The boy

Is blocked in poverty.  The soldier shines

Beyond him, ineffectual the toy

To march the viewer to the beauties he

Desires in Cape Canaveral’s slobbered heat.

The boy, transfixed (daydreaminess), can see

That he is helpless, too, his doom complete.

  He slinks away in taunting’s afternoon

    Not knowing he will watch men walk the moon.

© Phillip Whidden