To OLD COMPOSURES

This is a page of "old-fashioned" poetry, in that it rhymes (usually) and contains no bad language (ever). You will find some nostalgia, some humor, some thoughty stuff and a little "Whaaat?" I hope you'll stay awhile and enjoy yourself here. I did.

The Golden Days

      Where are the early warm and golden days
      That we spent on the porches in the breeze?
      When we ran down a country lane
      All glowing from a gentle rain,
      Or sat on the limbs of apple trees?

      Where is the elegance of olden ways
      That we now only read about and sigh?
      When romance, more than falling hard
      Began with gloves and calling card
      And gentlefolk set their standards high?

      Where is the simpleness of living well
      That was taken for granted yesterday?
      When a fire in the coldest place
      Made radiant the oldest face,
      And families would make a home and stay?

      Oh I miss more of yesterday than I can tell,
      For the promise our children had in store,
      When their lives wouldn't keep them guessing,
      Full of peace and full of blessing,
      I would have passed them on.
      But when I look, they're gone.
      Where are the golden days
          we'll never know anymore?


A Second Look at Those Days

As I become what's known
As a woman of certain age,
My observations have shown
That, indeed, the current rage
For nostalgia in every form
Would give me to understand
That my memories should be warm
And the good old days were grand.

But as I become more wise,
Approaching what I can tell
Is my ultimate demise,
While memory serves me well,
Recalling my life's condition
Until I've had a crawfull,
I've developed a real suspicion
That the good old days were awful.

Truth Tells and Honesty Does





No sloppy sentimentalist, I,
who hates to tell or write a lie,
No words in praise of beauty soften
my poems, for I don't see it often,
And when I write an epigram, it
shows emotion that runs the gamut
From cynical view to pessimistic,
and so it marks me as fatalistic.
But in the eye of this beholder
of truth, that doesn't change the older
It gets, I trust it more than those
who bleed from thorns and see a rose.



Sharp Edges

      Had you a mother meek and mild
      and numbered among the saints,
      The better to hear you with, my child,
      and listen to your complaints?

      Or had you a hoyden brash and wild
      encumbered with no restraints,
      The better to see you with, my child,
      and view your apparent taints?

      Allow me to mention this as now,
      unsought, you're sure to appear
      And get my attention, speaking how
      you thought I wanted to hear:

      That now you've a mother unbeguiled
      who slumbered unpeacefully.
      Confession is good for your soul, my child,
      but not for the soul of me.


Ornithology and Other Remarks








The birds fly south in winter

Where they congregate on the power lines
Or take residence in the tallest pines,
The weight of their numbers bending branches...
The Sporty and Fit go to desert ranches
And the birds fly south in winter.

They cover the hills in drifting masses
To steal the grain and ruin the grasses,
The air is rent with a chorus of screeches...
Old Money goes to Florida beaches
And the birds fly south in winter.

They rise from the rivers in clouds of slate
To darken horizons before it's late,
The farmer counts every row he loses...
Successful Yuppies take island cruises
And the birds fly south in winter.

They consume the bounty of land that's warmer
While awaiting signs for a clear informer
To follow the path of the vegetation...
All I get a a week's vacation
But the birds fly north for summer.





Sweet Violets Revisited

      Growing a garden's a hell of a job,
      You give up relaxing and dress like a
      Farmer, and spend a small fortune on seeds
      For getting a bountiful harvest of
      Shovel and hoe, how expensive the tool
      To make you a master and less of a
      Person of energy, all vim and vigor,
      You go to the garden and work like a
      Slave, and with luck only once on your side,
      You may find a vegie that hasn't yet
      Rotted and molded, the turnip you dug
      Had already been eaten up by the
      Weather conditions of drizzle and hail.
      Wouldn't you rather be locked up in

      Sweet violets bloom in February.
      Three, maybe four, there have never been more,
      Once in a while you get sweet violets.

      Now it's July and you rise from your bed
      To work in the garden. You'd rather be
      Sitting inside with your coffee and news
      Than fighting a battle you know you will
      Never give up, never poison your plants,
      Hoping you'll win by the seat of your
      Old-fashioned method of finger and thumb,
      Squashing the bugs, which is messy and
      Garden organically, you'll come to terms:
      Boiling the brocolli gets out the
      Sand and the melons you never would spray
      Haven't been seen since the middle of
      Standing there sweating, you're having a fit.
      Crawling with aphids and buried in

      Sweet violets bloom in February.
      Three, maybe four, there have never been more,
      Once in a while you get sweet violets.

Elizabeth Maddox Dies All the Time

    One is inclined as one starts turning gray
    To scanning the headings among the obits
    For friends and acquaintances, this one admits.
    Elizabeth Maddox was buried today.

    Do I imagine, or am I correct?
    The name is familiar, I've seen it before.
    Not less do I wonder, I wonder but more.
    Elizabeth already passed, I reflect.

    Survived by a grandson and neices who, when
    The end was apparent, sent out to the news
    A pretty remembrance for printing on Tues.
    Elizabeth Maddox has died once again.

    Several days later, an error is caught,
    Opening out the obits for a peek,
    There lies Elizabeth, same as last week.
    Elizabeth wasn't as sick as they thought.

    Maybe some weeks will have passed with no sign
    Of duplicate notices bordered in black,
    Then suddenly one Sunday morning she's back.
    Elizabeth Maddox was seventy-nine.

    The seasons go by and it's always the same,
    Albeit with some variations, I find.
    She once left a widower, sons come to mind,
    Elizabeth died and they printed her name.

    A city of thousands, I often have said,
    Could easily have some Elizabeths left
    Who, married to Maddoxes, leave them bereft.
    Elizabeth Maddox is certainly dead.

    So I open the paper again, as I swear
    The daughters and sisters and brothers who mourn her
    Are legion, I glance down the page to the corner,
    Elizabeth, sure as I'm living, is there,

    Oh, let me be someone unique or sublime,
    That my name in the paper on some distant day
    Won't prompt any casual reader to say,
    I've seen that name, why, she dies all the time.

Summer Apparition

July came scorching down again,
the heat was so intense
That it made the houses wiggle
and the night a black so dense
That it gathered in the creases
of the cool I hoped to borrow
That would spread upon my burning eyes
to dim the new tomorrow.

When dawn came up so gaudy
and so red and brittle bright
That the moving waves of vapor
soaked it up into the light
That became a brilliant fog and
drifted outward from the sky
That was smoke ascending up, I saw
the burning of July.


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