A CHRISTMAS LAMENT

When it’s raining in December

We know climate change is here

And we hardly can remember

When the snow brought Christmas cheer.

Then the sleigh bells all were jingling

As we coasted over the snow

And our voices all were mingling

In the carols we still know.

Now alas the gray rain’s falling

On the streets so wet and bare.

It is really quite appalling

That there’s not a snowflake there.

And the lakes are all unfrozen.

We’ve forgotten how to ski.

Oh we never should have chosen

To enact this tragedy.

(RiverWoods Poems, Dec. 2021)

RIVERWOODS POEMS: EVE’S FRUIT

WHEN WE ARE YOUNG

WE GNAW THE APPLE GREEDILY

WIPE THE JUICES FROM OUR CHIN

AND THROW THE CORE AWAY.

IN MIDDLE AGE

WE SLICE THE APPLE

INTO DECOROUS FOURTHS

TO BE CHEWED DELIBERATELY.

AND IN OUR FINAL YEARS

THE APPLE MUST BE STEWED,

SUGARED AND SPICED

TO SWEETEN ITS SOUR TASTE.

RIVERWOODS POEMS: CALL TO THE COLORS

CALL TO THE COLORS

(An Ode to Racists)

How dispiriting are all-white bouquets

Compared to colorful flower displays.

How unappealing the all-white plate

(Of cauliflower, rice and fish) to our palates.

Albino animals we don’t think pretty.

We consider them odd; they excite our pity.

Why then do we struggle and plot and connive

To be an all-white, pasty-faced, anemic tribe?

I put this query to ardent racists

Who hate the sight of different faces

And want an exclusive society

With no interesting variety.

Let’s chord the song, let’s add new notes.

Who knows?  We might even like these folks.

 

 

RIVERWOODS POEMS: HAND ME DOWNS

                    Hand Me Downs

My husband was a small town Indiana boy

Who heard the lonely whistle of the train

Just down the street and watched the glowworms

Dance above the seas of cornfields lapping

At his door.  The eldest son, at the age of twelve

He drove a tractor on his uncle’s farm.

In the village school his father was the principal.

His mother put small stitches into quilts

And watered African violets with her tears.

Chickens, bees and gardens fed them for the year

Along with fallen fruit and Uncle Paul’s

Pork and goat milk.  Nothing went to waste.

So when a research scientist, he built a woodland

House, cleared trails and planted raised-bed 

Gardens fertilized by red worm-generated compost.

Gardens and chickens were carried on by his son

An engineer who felt the family heritage was worth

Preserving and perhaps even passing on.

 

 

THOUGHTS IN WINTER: RiverWoods Poems

WINTRY THOUGHTS

I wish that once more we could walk

Across a wintry parking lot

And I could feel your ungloved hand.

We reveled in a northern land,

Planted our skis on snow-packed trails

And snow-shoe’d over hills and dales.

I wish we could be comrades again.

When pines with snowy mounds are bent

And ice shards crackle underfoot

And overhead a raven croaks

Then I imagine I can see

Your ski tracks up ahead of me.

 

RIVERWOODS POEMS: OUR LADY

Our Lady of Liberty, cover your eyes.

Your huddled masses do not breathe free.

They cower in cells, they molder in sties.

Of liberty this is a mockery.

Our Lady of Liberty, cover your ears.

Terrified children torn from families

Are not what you would have wanted to hear.

What justifies these atrocities?

Our Lady of Liberty, what has become

Of our founding fathers’ noble ideals?

We can no longer be rightly known

As the home of the brave and the land of the free.

These are the evils of slavery

Enforced by the power of tyranny.

RIVERWOODS POEMS: FREAK SHOW

FREAK SHOW

Why do we sit in our circus seats

Watching a shaggy yellow-haired ape

Swagger and strut his pompous stuff?

Hear all the dissonant noise he makes!

Does he mean us harm?  Is that a stick

Of dynamite or is it sugar cane?

And is that a cigarette lighter

His other hand points and waves

At us?  Why don’t we boo and hiss

Until they drag him off the stage?

We like to play with fire.  We love

To tempt the bull, wave the red cape,

Run our outdated nuclear reactors,

Ignore the winds of a blackening hurricane.

 

 

RIVERWOODS POEMS: SPRING FEVER

SPRING FEVER

 

What a beneficent day this is:

Sumer is icumen in,

Lilacs at the door now bloom,

Our time for flowering has come.

Toss the cumbrous coats aside.

Light and lithesome is our style.

We’ll be darkly cloaked no more.

Warmth has reached our northern shores.

From our caverns we’ll emerge,

For frolicking we feel the urge.

Setting out plants and pulling weeds

With gardening fervor we are seized

Old bones step out with vigor and vim

And all the world is young again.

 

 

 

RIVERWOODS POEMS: CUTTING THE CORD

CUTTING THE CORD

At the age of twelve, why did I

Decide it was time to be baptized?

In our church, full immersion was the rite.

I never experienced an epiphany,

No inner voices spoke to me,

My nights were calm: no vision dreams.

It was a fairly embarrassing sight

To be draped in a tent-like gown of white:

A dunked and dripping young acolyte.

But it seemed like a step toward maturity,

Like a high school diploma, a college degree:

An escape from parental authority.

RIVERWOODS POEMS: THE STAFF OF LIFE

THE STAFF OF LIFE

My daughter has carved a stout hiking staff

For me to carry along Elysian trails.

She thinks that on that journey I will have

A need to warn sky bears to stay away.

We carried bear sticks once in Glacier Park

And bear bells tinkled merrily as we walked

Back when the ice fields still were white and hard.

That they would disappear we never thought.

The river of time runs either slow or fast

Depending on the season and the flood.

How much I’d give to live again the past

And I’d not change it even if I could.