Poem: Crystalline Flakes Fall Down from the Sky

Crystalline Flakes Fall Down from the Sky

Crystalline flakes fall down from the sky

Melting all colors of the auroral world

Causing men to scurry about to ply

The piles from the roads and the holds

So children can catch buses for school 

And the work of our lives can continue

Making none the wiser, perhaps the fool

That the world is frozen and should be subdued.

Awake from your slumber, plows to prepare

Light the fires to warm the buildings

So that they don’t become tombs so spare

That no one can cause the bells to ring.

We all know it’s true that frost bodes death

Yet here we are alive as ever we have been.

Shine the lights, let them sparkle as our health 

Cannot be frozen like the rain has been.

No, we cannot slumber beneath the snow.

We must dig out, not let this be our grave

But awake to the morning so we grow

Toward the sunlight beyond the cloud’s maze.

Rouse the children, fill them with nourishment

So they stay warm and strong throughout the days.

They must carry on as we know they’re meant

Because when has sun not broken the maze?

Keep the lights shining through the frozen night

And let the children in the snow just play

Because somewhere out there the sun is bright 

And the old man, Death, cannot have his way.

We all know it’s true that frost bodes Death

Yet here we are alive as ever we have been.

Shine the lights, let them sparkle as our health

Cannot be frozen like the rain has been.

So children catch buses for school

And the work of our lives can continue

Making none the wiser, perhaps the fool,

That the world is frozen and should be subdued.

Crystalline flakes fall down from the sky

Muting all colors of the auroral world

Causing men to scurry about to ply

The piles from the roads and the holds.

December 2022

About This Poem

I was trying to be traditional in style in this one while making a point of the joy of winter in spite of what it may represent. While it does forbode death, it can be beautiful and fun. It may take some work to be that, but it is worth the effort and it keeps the doldrums at bay. It is a modern sort of "Snowbound" by Whittier. The photo is from somewhere here on the Palouse.
 

Poem: Slipping Away

 

Slipping Away

It slips through your fingers

Like sand on the shore,

Laughing at you when

You grasp for more.

If you look away 

Even briefly it is gone.

Leaving you bereft of your own

Senses. This time it’s a friend

Maybe even a lover

But have no fear, brother,

For soon it will be you

No matter what you do.

Remember that soap opera,

Like Sands Through the Hourglass,

So are the Days of Our Lives?

No matter all the fantasy

This part was true,

And taunting of you

As you let the sand trickle

Watching rubbish

Steal the very sands of time

From you, while you sat

Enthralled, not even feeling

It slip away

Stealing all that you had come

To love, not even knowing.

But sand and time,

So plentiful may seem,

Yet only a little of either

Can you briefly hold.

July 2023

About This Poem

I don't know what inspired this poem, but I know that many of the tombstones in the older cemeteries like this one in Boston have epitaphs and grim reapers and hourglasses to remind you that your time is limited. In the cemetery it can seem grim, but it really is something good to remember. I think I could probably improve upon this poem a bit, but for now I'll share this version.

248. Grateful for US Regionalism

I don’t know if I have written this before in my American gratitude list, but as it is the season of gratitude, I’m going to write about the distinct regionalism in our great country. There are a zillion examples in topography, speech, climate zones, etc. The American West, where I’m from, is a great landscape of wonders formed by the Rockies and the other mountain ranges. The Southwest is warmer and dry from the variety of deserts and because of the weathering patterns it has amazing rock formations from the Rio Grande to the Colorado. The Northwest has its own desert effects on the Columbia Plateau and the Snake River Plain and the mountains here are heavily forested, often temperate rain forests. And then there are the plains states between the Rockies and Appalachia—beautiful windswept grasslands and farmlands. The eastern seaboard has the gentle Appalachian Mountains and Gulf states are sub-tropical with warm waters and a variety of plant life not to be found anywhere else.

Then there are the quirks brought by the varieties of peoples who settled there. Here in the Northwest we have creeks, like much of the country, but New England has brooks and the Dutch settled Hudson Valley and parts of Pennsylvania have kills. We all have our regional names inspired or given by the indigenous people of where we live from Washington’s Yakima Valley to the southern Chattahoochee River. The blending of languages all brought together into the ever-evolving English that we speak throughout the nation bring us a gorge in the east to a Grand Canyon in the west. In parts of Pennsylvania people call others youse guys, while in the south it becomes you all, or y’all. Our accents and landscapes give way to foods that also were inspired by not only the natives of the land, but the people who invaded so that maple syrup of New England has become generally American just as the squash and pumpkins of the south and corn of who-knows-where have become part of our unique national heritage. This heritage we sing of and riff throughout our Jazz and Blues, our Country Western, our Rap and our collective being from Florida to Alaska and Hawaii to Maine, logging, fishing, mining, farming, manufacturing, and weaving into this amazing quilt of 50+ pieces that make us both Idahoan, Floridian, Hawaiian, New Yorkers, Virginian—Americans. This is one of those e pluribus unum things that makes me so thankful for my country and so proud to be an American.