June 2020
Sterling Warner
jsterlingwarner@gmail.com
Bio Note: An author, poet, educator, my poems have appeared in many international literary magazines, journals and anthologies, including The Flatbush Review and Metamorphoses. My most recent poetry collections are Edges and Rags & Feathers. A Washington based author, I enjoy writing, turning wood, and—with as the coronavirus lock-down subsides, I’ll start fishing along the Hood Canal.

Ode to a Dead-End Street

A ten-yard gravel road
as black tar subsides, 
square yellow sign
pointing North, South
East, & West reads
No Outlet & below
that, Dead, the word
End chipped away, 
obscured further by
spray paint graffiti.

This street I knew, a
thoroughfare to nature
where cherry trees
hung heavy in June
inviting liberation,
long before fruit pickers
lightened branches,
sending buckets of 
bings & royal Anns to
markets & consumers.

January 2020, bulldozers 
leveled the orchard,
trees, moles & gophers
made way for surveyors,
tract homes emerged, now
children grow up amid
an asphalt graveyard, 
half-life in a neighborhood
without a dead end street—
gateway to natural adventure.
©2020 Sterling Warner
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL