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Robert Waltrip Poem
I know you’re there, just out of sight,
There among the black far-reaches
Like a rider of dreams in the night
Searching for reason that impeaches.
You have left behind no traces
Of where you’ve gone or maybe sent.
Your journey seeks familiar faces
Yet posed in unfamiliar bent.
And reasons, they are vaguely veiled
While cognizance won’t clarify.
And rationale is un-detailed
While reaching does but rarify.
Oh, where does purpose hide its grail,
There in the crevice of a mind -
For wont of quests that do not fail
In hopes of dreams that are not blind?
I call you not, you’re back unpacked,
A door of no return passed through -
Rejoined with logic’s wakeful tact
And much to share betwixt the two.
Copyright © Robert Waltrip | Year Posted 2024
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Robert Waltrip Poem
The Empty Page
It sat there at my student desk
In wait of task to tend.
Write a poem, the teacher urged,
Your thoughts to paper, penned.
Intently, I perused the sheet,
Pale white and yet unmarked.
It lay there teasing my first move,
“Don’t leave me unremarked.”
This paper, college ruled and prim,
Well-bleached and full of aughts,
Stared blankly back at me to help,
With all my labored thoughts.
I searched the room for any clues
Of how I was to learn.
The clock was running faster now,
No time to wait and yearn.
I sat there squeamish and unnerved,
Too weak to brandish pen.
It was my first time close to death,
Too late for where and when.
Surely, all the class can see
My torment and refrain.
I’d rather have a spelling bee.
I’m circling ‘round the drain.
In looking back these many years,
My eyes were outward bent.
The chalkboard hung erased to black.
My mind, abridged, was spent.
But time has made its mark on me,
Halfway granting one old wish -
To find that poem in myself,
And give to Mr. Nish.
Robert Farrell Waltrip
Copyright © Robert Waltrip | Year Posted 2024
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Robert Waltrip Poem
Life in a Jar
I’d like to find a special jar
To put aside some life,
A jar that keeps both face and form,
And stints the scourge of change.
I’d put therein, a rusted leaf,
Or summer’s one perhaps,
To always have the seasons at
The twisting of a wrist.
I’d put therein, my true love’s kiss,
To always know its taste.
And next to that a snapshot of
The world within her eyes.
I’d also save, encased therein,
First cries out to the world;
Of lives conceived through gifted love,
And feeling newly born.
I’d store away the vistas of
Grand aspects, earthly borne,
And let them burn through fired glass
From every lay of land.
Then I would not be far from life,
From where I cannot see.
No, I prefer to keep it fresh
For morning’s light, through glass.
It’s change that writes the script of life
And fleshes out the page.
While time is just a numbered pause
Without a story told.
Copyright © Robert Waltrip | Year Posted 2025
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Robert Waltrip Poem
I’ve lost my heart among the woods,
Where now it flutters in the drafts
And moves about close secrets kept
Within the floras’ whispered breath.
I know because there glimpses break
Between the bark-skinned living things,
Where there it flows from one to next
In jubilant discovery.
I feel it yet, though standing yon,
Of how the boughs absorb the sun
Among the shafted beams of light
That pierce the hazy, busy air.
Despite observing, yet I sense
The stirring of euphoria
That rises from the forest floor
To giant heights within my heart.
I think that I should join with it
If I can catch it in a pause,
For time can pass so ever slow
And ever speed to its demise.
Copyright © Robert Waltrip | Year Posted 2024
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Robert Waltrip Poem
The lightning danced all through the night
To wrought a festival of fire
That put to torch in blackened blight,
And scorched the forest like a pyre
Now, petroglyphs of nature’s arts
In splotchy ash ‘cross craggy scarp,
Are scarred background to blackened ghosts
Now frozen in escapement’s warp.
The energy of blackened woods
And flora from the forest floor
Has left behind the fertile goods
Of nascence sown, as evermore.
Copyright © Robert Waltrip | Year Posted 2025
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Robert Waltrip Poem
I wait for the sound of keys at the door,
A prelude to your eyes in mine,
For your presence to affirm me more,
Like the timeless aging of fine wine –
Left un-tasted now, ‘til evermore.
The paper awaits your keenly sage
Review in comforted, shoeless wit.
The subject ever stays unchanged.
At least you’re spared reliving it -
Our story merged on unturned page.
To your return, our kids look anxiously
For jurisprudence and example,
And the reassurance of authority.
Of you they are molded and resemble –
Ever yours, in loving paternity.
Your dinner on the stove, still good,
Awaits adventure on your palate.
It matters less your taste for food,
Than that we share what’s on our plate -
Our table’s set, with thanks to God.
The scent of your life still hangs, you see,
Expectantly in the empty air,
Waiting there to rejoin with me
In that balance of chemistry we share –
Our formula viewed as the enemy.
Time is as short as yesterday,
And as long as just one second.
In our fate, we have scarcely a say,
As to when we shall be beckoned –
For hope and grace, we can only pray.
The world stopped turning on that date,
When rage was lifted over love.
But I refuse to be consoled by hate,
For fear that love be lost thereof –
Like the sun going down on me tonight.
Copyright © Robert Waltrip | Year Posted 2025
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Robert Waltrip Poem
The mirror of a life that’s mine
Sits journeyed in the wall.
The face is young, its glance is not,
As old and young recall.
The answer, fading, pauses there
Though burning in the mind,
Young again to feel the world,
Yet aged well like fine wine.
We can just once have been there young,
Where now we cast, as old -
Our image into moistened eye,
Both now and then, to hold.
Copyright © Robert Waltrip | Year Posted 2024
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Robert Waltrip Poem
Chicken Little
Much like a messenger to mind,
Posed staring down into my face,
I sensed a rooster, brash and bold,
Was challenging my right to breathe.
Thus, in the inkling of an eye
With onset latent bleariness,
The old conundrum, fight or flight,
Was freshly flashing in my head.
This rooster was no idle threat.
Its size, imposing, filled my sky.
Its comb was cocked with attitude.
Its beak was aimed between my eyes.
Its eyes were beady like black peas.
They pierced my confidence and will.
Its countenance was firmly grim.
Its posture signaled, “Make my day!”
Then, in a moment’s timed elapse,
My brain awoke in roused synapse.
Fear not, it’s just macropsia.
The sky’s not falling after all.
Copyright © Robert Waltrip | Year Posted 2025
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Robert Waltrip Poem
The day was ending,
But a window was open
To a view of dying embers
Ablaze on the coastal horizon.
Like a canvas in motion,
It captured amazement,
Reaching out hypnotically
Through clouds awash in fire,
And across amber-mirrored beach sands
To the beholder, burning its image
Into the retinal lining of the soul;
Like a lamp onto pier’s end,
And an invitation to tomorrow.
Copyright © Robert Waltrip | Year Posted 2025
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Robert Waltrip Poem
I’m sitting on the edge of time
For just a disembodied pause,
While pointed hands o’er rounded chime
Obey the pendulum’s swayed cause.
Where kinetics’ course is lastly laid,
Comes forth the pointing to a door
That opens wide. Be not afraid,
I think, to thereupon explore.
And there I search the sea, in stay,
For those few drops that speak of me.
Below a crystal clouded day,
I look for cause and clarity.
But deep inside, my inner clock
Is calling forth its metered rhyme.
Inclined I am to learn like Locke,
I’m also tuned by trembling tine.
The edge of time is thinner than
The fairest maiden’s finest hair,
Yet broader is the settled plan
That puts us just exactly there.
Copyright © Robert Waltrip | Year Posted 2025
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