The following is a poem I wrote for creative writing my senior year at Jewell. I assume it was in the spring of 1989. It relates a true story from my childhood.
Walking to school
in the first grade,
I noticed the world was going to end
before sundown.
I had just walked over the new
and freshly painted
grey "bridge"
that my friend's father had built
over the "creek".
Looking back, I see a walkway over
a ditch,
but the world is different for a first-grader.
I looked up
and in the bright blue
of the morning sky
I saw the moon.
This undeniably meant one thing:
The world was going to end
before sundown.
Disbelief melted down my skin
and evaporated.
I looked again.
The full moon was still there,
smiling at me
like a skull.
I decided to stop by the Post Office
and ask Mom about it.
And if she laughed and told me I was wrong,
I would march the rest of the way to school
and tell the all-knowing Miss Wolfe
the world was going to end
before sundown.
When she confirmed my story
I would tell her there was no point in my staying at school.
I would retrace my steps on the cracked and broken sidewalk
back to the Post Office
to let my surprised mother
(complete with wide eyes
and confused frown)
know she was wrong--
and probably for the last time.
The world was going to end
before sundown.
© copyright 1989, Mark Travis Riggs
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