Saxby Pridmore: Three Poems

“That’ll be the Day”

Pretty soon the last of those who

Listened to Buddy Holly on records

And sang to “Peggy Sue” on the radio

Will be dead.

And then Buddy will be dead.

Really dead.

Of course, historians will dig him up

And listen to old recordings as with

Marcus Aurelius’ “The Meditations”

And Al Jolson.

But that’s a different love.

Not our love.

As we die, Buddy dies. And blankets

Fold over a man, a creative talent

A voice, a beat, a time, a plane crash

And a pioneer.

“That’ll be the day ay ay

When I die.”

Saxby Pridmore

Kepler-452b

It’s a long way away, but it is there.

A telescope way out in the Cygnus constellation

Sent strings of zeros and ones, describing Kepler-452b.

It’s a little further from its star than we are

But, theirs is a little hotter than ours.

It’s in the Goldilocks zone, not too hot and not too cold.

It’s a long way away, but it is there.

It’s a bit bigger than Earth, so

The gravity will be about double. Not

Impossible but not the place for jogging.

Its atmosphere is twice as thick. An

Interesting feature, not a problem.

It’s a long way away, but it is there.

It was a world without violence or weapons

Where the trees think and the cows vote (green).

Back home we prepared a colonizing force, when

They sent a message. They’d been fooling around. If

We ever returned, they’d turn Earth into a cantaloupe.

Saxby Pridmore

Ron

How good was Ron Clarke?

He was bloody good

Bloody good.

He broke seventeen world records

And beat a lot of top runners.

He lit the stadium torch in Melbourne

At the fifty-six Olympics, and gas flashed

Up and burnt his arm like buggery.

And he didn’t even flinch.

That’s how good he was.

Saxby Pridmore