During poetry month, April 2023, Kearney Public Library welcomed a new poet among us. It was sort of a ‘Return of the Native” evening, a welcoming back among us, and we all met that night a fine poet, an accomplished person, both humble and witty and alert. His name is Bruce Whitaker, and here is how Bruce tells a bit of his story.
He writes-I was born and raised in Kearney, and after graduating from UNL, I moved to New York, where I’ve lived more or less since. I want to share a poem I wrote that explores pop culture, time, and the stages of life. I wrote it while taking a workshop held by my publisher, Roxanne Hoffman of Poets Wear Prada. The prompt was to take two years in time and explore the songs, TV shows, events, fads, etc., from each year, then use these bits in a poem. Using the year of my birth and the year I moved to New York, I crafted “Arrivals and Departures”. It captures my parents’ early years in El Rancho Trailer Court on West Highway 30, and the day I flew east from the Kearney airport in one of the old Frontier Airlines turboprop planes.
And here is the brief bio he sent Kearney Creates:
Bruce E. Whitacre-Good Housekeeping, 2024 from Poets Wear Prada, a BookLife Reviews Editors Pick. The Elk in the Glade: The World of Pioneer and Painter Jennie Hicks, Crown Rock Media, was also a BookLife Reviews Editors Pick and placed 2nd in Contemporary Poetry at The BookFest Spring 2023. Richard Thomas has narrated the audiobook version of this title. Whitaker’s crown sonnet about the culture of violence won the Nebraska Poetry Society’s 2023 Open Poetry Contest. His poems have appeared in many anthologies and over thirty-five journals. He has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. He lives in Forest Hills, NY. www.brucewhitacre.com.
About the poem he sent, “Arrivals and Departures,” Bruce adds this note: One of my fellow workshop participants, the brilliant poet Megha Sood, asked me to submit it to a journal she helps edit called Life and Legends. A couple of months later, it was published. If you follow the link below, you’ll find another “change of life” poem, “Night Writer”, about when I lived in Rome as a World Food Programme administrative officer. http://lifeandlegends.com/bruce-e-whitacre/
Bruce adds-Only lately, much embarrassed, have I learned “Dust in the Wind” is by Kansas, not Jackson Brown. Even more appropriate. To be corrected in the manuscript! I read this poem in 2023 when I first appeared at the Kearney Public Library and began to renew my connections to Kearney after almost fifty years of being away from the state’s cultural life. I thank Rick Brown, Deanna Jesse, Mark Foradori, Chuck Peek, Terry Schifferns, and Christine Walsh, for making me feel so at home in my hometown. The thriving literary and artistic community of Kearney is truly impressive, and I commend all who contribute to it.
You can help welcome Bruce back by reading the poem he read that night and sent us for Kearney Creates.
Arrivals and Departures
She squeezed her belly out from behind the wheel.
The red and white Ford matched their mobile home.
“Que Sera,” sang her namesake on the radio.
“Let’s hope”, she muttered, swinging to the screen door.
She hears him swing the Le Sabre into the garage.
The motorized door closes behind him.
Is this the last time her oldest will rattle the house?
Jackson Brown’s “Dust in the Wind” tinny on the radio.
Their tiny trailer home is parked in a gravel court.
The Ford had barely managed to tow it from the farm.
Her last term teaching had not been easy. At the school picnic
she’d practically choked on the hardest kicks yet.
He sets the groceries down on the counter, then
off to his room—a call or a record—not seeing her
turn from the sink in hopes of a hug. Maybe
on the last camping trip…too many distractions here.
Their new TV had been a welcome distraction all that spring:
Elvis’s scandalous hips, the first “Edge of Night”, the news.
Eisenhower was the man of this house, she was reminded.
She works on her cooking hoping for fewer burnt pancakes.
At the lake, she cooks and paces. She feels him
pulling away even from her gaze. He has eyes
only a distant shore and tall towers, it seems.
He runs in cut-offs after his old pal, the dog.
The old wives were right. Castor oil
launched the clenching and ripping.
She came to with his wet head on her breast,
his father beside them in a checked sport shirt.
His bags checked, they await the prop plane.
What’s left to say after 22 years? Was anything ever—?
A hug, a quick kiss, he lopes up the steps, hatch closes, gone.
On the quiet ride home, she hums “Que Sera.”