Robert M. Simmons  

from Morning in Middleborough... (Poems 1991-2006)   

             Beyond the Portière

I was sitting in an Eastlake chair

beyond the portière

in the parlor of my Queen Anne home

surrounded by antiques

sipping sherry from a glass

listening to Massenet’s "Meditation"

on a stereo concealed

in a Rococo Revival sideboard

reflecting upon Shelley’s "Hymn"

and Keats’s "Ode"

when a sand and gravel truck

came rolling down the road

shaking my granite foundation

as it bounced over potholes

its diesel pistons pounding

a wild jungle drumbeat

belching black smoke

from twin chrome headers

that wafted through my window

in caustic pepper clouds

and a teenage mother

with tattoos and body piercing

passing on the sidewalk

like a wandering concubine

from some long forgotten tribe

pushing a fully-loaded double stroller

flicked a smoldering cigarette filter

onto my neatly manicured lawn.

Recalling Owen Warland

when his butterfly was squeezed,

I muttered Kurtz’s final words

and sneezed.

                          © 2003 by Robert M. Simmons

Reading Keats in the parlor of the Sarah E. Harlow House, Middleboro, Massachusetts where this and many other poems were inspired

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Subjects: decline of civilization, eighteen wheelers, teenage mothers, cigarette filters, satire, poetry, poems

Beyond the Portiere