Ronald Wallace Poems

Noon. Hunger the only thing
singing in my belly.
I walk through the blossoming cherry trees
on the library mall,
...

occur.
Some days I find myself
putting my foot in
the same stream twice;
...

Every Friday night we watched the fights.
Me, ten years old and stretched out on the couch;
my father, in his wheelchair, looking on
as Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson
...

Australia. Phillip Island. The Tasman Sea.
Dusk. The craggy coastline at low tide in fog.
Two thousand tourists milling in the stands
...

Sometimes I wish I drank coffee
or smoked Marlboros, or maybe cigars-
yes, a hand-rolled Havana cigar
...

Who was it said, comedy is when
you slip on a banana peel and fall down
and smack your head; tragedy is when
I get a hangnail? The universe doesn't
...

It was the summer of mold,
mildew and rot, the windowsills
rife with decay, the old
siding warped, or shot.
...

Gathered in the heavy heat of Indiana,
we've come from all over this great
country, one big happy family, back from
wherever we've spread ourselves too thin.
...

So now I remember why I like the snow:
after a winter of over one hundred inches
(a record, at least) that threatens to make us go
crazy (or to Florida) with the cranes and finches
...

Who would have thought I'd end up
with plantar warts, Morton's neuroma,
a torn lateral meniscus, gastro-intestinal
disorders, scoliosis, slipped discs, degenerative
...