LW Poetry

This feature showcases original poems by members of the Creative Writers Club of Leisure World and other GRF members.

The autor writes: “After binge-watching old Hitchcock movies and reading “The Raven” on the same night, I imagined that if Edgar Allan Poe’s great-grandson married Alfred Hitchcock’s grand-daughter, and they had a 6-year-old child, perhaps this might be little Johnny’s first poem, and the reason for the first time his parents would need to attend a parent-teacher conference.”

Lonely Heart (Apologies to Edgar Allan Poe)

Once before my bedtime, nearing, which I dreaded, fazed and fearing, Stories mother would read me before she closed and locked my bedroom door— While I washed up in the water, could mom have drawn it any hotter?

Before me swam a rubber duckling, chuckling as my mother shut the door “’Tis some water fowl,” I muttered, “which mother bought me from the store.

Only this and nothing more.” Ah, distinctly I can place it—the sad night Mother would misplace it; Or entirely erase it; of her mind remaining nothing more.

I lay in bed, mother tucking, on feathers of mother’s plucking Time for your book, said mother clucking, clucking as she locked the bedroom door— I’ll read “Make Way for Ducklings” and then warm milk she began to pour all across the bedroom floor. Assuredly, I felt no sorrow, as mother left me till the morrow Sighing—buying time—which maybe I could only hope to borrow; I heard my monstrous mother screaming, or maybe Tippi Hedren streaming as Hitchcock’s “Birds” was beaming from the TV laying on the floor— “’Tis just Hitchcock’s “Birds” beaming from the TV laying on the floor”— This it is and nothing more.”

Inside that book peered at me smiling, a crazed duck that set me dialing 911 and protective services to frantically implore The feeling in my stomach sinking, “I need a friend,” I was thinking Staring wildly at this ghastly mallard who chilled me to the core Then, at once, I saw it, heard it, this grinning duck needn’t chill me to the core as he said, “I will be your friend forevermore”.

—Dave Crandall, Halloween 2023