Bill Roberts, Poet

Wild West

Friday, December 11th, 2009

It takes practice

to ride a cactus.

City slickers

feel the stickers.

Real cowgirls and cowboys

don’t make the OW! noise.

They ride ‘em hard,

never get scarred.

You too can ride….

if you have a tough hide!

(Published originally in the wonderful children’s magazine, Cricket, quite a few years ago when I used Bartlett Boswell as my pseudonym)
Note:  I often use this poem to warm up an audience when I recite.  To get them in the mood, I suggest they imagine themselves as six-year-olds again, wearing a cowboy/cowgirl outfit, sixshooter tucked in a sagging holster, staring up at one of those gigantic saguaro types of cactus with its many prickly arms, and the cactus stares down at them, repeating this poem of warning.  Would I enjoy being a kid again, say, just for a few minutes?  Wouldn’t we all?

Posted in Children, Country-western, Humor, Nostalgia, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Crows Perched On Crosses

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

Peering as we walk solemnly toward

the rectangular gap in the ground,

a jury of crows,

judging perhaps which of us

will take the next available opening.

Could be any of us,

all older than the chap this day

being permanently sealed underground.

Crows know a ripe crop

when they see one.

The old man wearing a cross and

speaking in tongues

also qualifies as a candidate,

but the crows favor eying me.

Perhaps it’s my shuffling gait.

Could be the squawking hearing aids.

They know all the signs,

as I try to ignore them,

singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

They nod, join me in the second chorus.

(Published online in the November 2009 issue of Chantarelle’s Notebook)

Note:  Today as I enter this poem it’s a beautiful Thanksgiving Day.  So, what do I give you but a deeply dark poem.  At least there are birds in it, just not the edible kind.  This is one of my nightmare inspired poems, of which there are many.  So many nightmares, so many poems.  Maybe inspired too by all the crows hunkering about the neighborhood.  I love Chantarelle’s Notebook, which is courageous enough to occasionally publish my material, not all of it dark.  Let’s be thankful for what we have, what we’ve been given.  And as Julia would say, Bon appetit! But please – don’t eat crow.

Posted in Aging, Health, Human Nature, That's Life, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Their Once Beautiful Wives

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Thinning, scraggly hair,

moist red eyes, heavy-lidded,

puffy face, eternally frowning,

chins double, triple, quad,

shoulders caved forward

as if in defeat, probably defeat,

breasts slouching without muscle,

bellies in the tenth month

of another pregnancy,

butt with no definition whatever,

wrinkled skin on legs,

purpled with varicose rivers,

feet nearly always bare,

toenails yellow, untended.

What must they think of them,

these once wondrous specimens -

the charming guys they married,

their once beautiful wives?

NOTE:  A poem to misguide the reader into thinking I’m describing the aging female of couples when, lo and behold, it’s the males who most often dissipate with age.

Posted in Human Nature, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Comrades in Arms

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

– Our warriors don’t start the wars, they finish them

I finally list to a halt at your grave,

Clarence A. Reverski,

killed in action on June the 6th, D-Day,

1944, on the sand below the nearby cliffs,

perhaps on ominous Omaha Beach.

Your sleek, rounded alabaster cross

is one of many, interspersed by the occasional

six-pointed star, all arranged in precise

mathematical geometry in this vast, pristine

cemetery containing the remains of 9,387

noble Americans who sacrificed their lives.

You were a young sergeant from Michigan,

I read on your cross, causing my emotions

suddenly to well over, my stifled sobs

unnoticed by hundreds of other visitors

paying their quiet respects on this somber day

as a pale sun illumines tidy, close-cropped

grass at Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy.

I collect myself, glance at a cross behind yours,

its inscription reading simply:

Here Lies In Honored Glory

A Comrade In Arms

Known Only to God.

How great was your courage,

how near impossible your task,

how valiant your final moments.

To you, Clarence, and your fallen comrades,

Hail!  I salute you.

Your valor in battle so profound,

our pledge, Never Again, so shallow.

So shallow.

(Published in the June 2009 online issue of Long Story Short)

This poem came to me in a flash when my wife Irene and I made a return visit, forty years later, to the emotion-charged American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, in the fall of 2007.  I was weary, maybe lacking nourishment, and suddenly overcome when I stopped at Sergeant Clarence A. Reverski’s grave.  War is not my choice as an answer to threats, negotiation is.  However, World War Two was a just war, and our warriors, as they always do, fought valiantly, particularly during and after the D-Day invasion, facing terrible circumstances.  You must visit the invasion beaches (or, as the French prefer to call them, Liberation Beaches) and see those terrible cliffs, atop which the Nazis were so formidably entrenched to understand the focus of that vast battle.  I highly recommend a visit.  My hope is to return again someday, to visit loved French friends and beloved noble Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice.  I keep them in my prayers.

Posted in Nostalgia, Uncategorized | No Comments »