Caleb Perry Murdock

Sun-Struck

The sun has been written about too much
by earnest poets grasping for allusions.
The sun sets and brings despair; at poem’s end,
the sun rises and brings hope.  Hallelujah.

The sun has been coveted too much
by indolent, sand-seared sun-worshippers
spread like pralines across the vanilla beach.
Backs, buttocks and thighs glisten with sweat
in homage to the deathless King of Fusion.
The lovers of bare skin will soon be old.

The sun has been spoken about too much
by Vitalis-soaked TV weathermen
recently released from Chortling School.
The sun hides demurely behind the clouds,
the sun dances naked across the skies
in a burlesque of slick computer icons
that reduces the heavens to a farce.

But on this warm spring morning far away
from the nay-sayers of my clotted life,
in a meadow of clover, birch and bloom
suffused by the light of their benefactor,
with a long-nosed hare playing peek-a-boo
under the brush, and the robust cries
of blue jays dissenting the death of nature, —
the familiar hand of an old friend rests
on my shoulder. Today the sun is mine,
and mine only, to relish with a pure heart.

Caleb Perry Murdock was born in 1950 and lives in Rhode Island. He spent most of his life as a word-processing operator for law firms. He has written poetry since his twenties, but he didn’t lose his chronic writer’s block until his late sixties. He is now writing up a storm to make up for lost time.