Bob Perkins
Ray Bradbury died
"People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it." –
Ray Bradbury
We all love the smaller magics –
quarters in ears, Norman Rockwell
scenes, sideshows and carnie tricks
we're sure aren't real but can't quite tell
why not. Sounding a real alarm
takes more. Sounding it with love
requires that you be both the charm
and charmer, the wizard and the dove,
that you risk all. So, thanks, Ray — you
unburned the books, you peopled Mars,
you illustrated men, stayed true
to the deep magic of the heart.
But even magic cannot stop the coming day
and here it is, the future, without Ray
Bio
Bob Perkins is 82. He's been a paperboy, a submariner, a lawyer and a teacher, but these days he hangs out with his wife and reads and writes with the Manhattan Beach Senior Poetry Circle. You can find his poems here (Issue 15), in the Los Angeles Review, Consequence, Iamb, and elsewhere.