Where Have All the Whistlers Gone?

Where Have All the Whistlers Gone?
by Cliff Lynn

at what point in our history did lazy wend
its way into a four lettered word? backyard


hammock days reading wooden fiction or
Mad magazine with our eyes closed or


whistling our way into town like tom
or huck or becky work wasn't the enemy


wasn't a concept worth a whittle of our
time. where have all the whistlers gone?


like earl hagen who whistled andie and opie
to the fishin' hole. I met earl he was a guest

at a high school assembly blind as a black-eyed
pea crossed the stage with his son as a crutch

but that old slacker he could still warble
with the best of 'em. seems we've become

wounded with wasted worry compound
fractures of day jobs head wounds of second

jobs of worry. snow white wondered why
we wouldn't just whistle while we worked. but

ms. white aside, old earl got it right. he didn't
whistle while he worked- whistling was his work.