Your Poems About Fictional Characters and Authors

[AuntShecky]

Here's a thread for posting original poems about authors
(present and past) and/or fictional characters. The sonnet below is to get the proverbial ball rollin':

Rip


Climbing I recall without panting effort or grunt

up the piney Kattskill point over the ravine and glen.

No agenda. Was there ever one? For Sport, if not to hunt.

A spot to rest, a spot to drink. Everything went hazy then.

Something about more flagons, a crew of little men,

and ninepins; I don't know the score. I remember the beer.

Lord! Lateness will stir another row with what's-her-name --

Wanderlust, her nagging, my neglect will share the blame.

But where's Wolf! Here, boy! Wolf! He's gone, and I fear

for good. Is this my gun, this ruin of rust and wormy stock?

What grows on my face? Gray moss? It's Age: a sheer

drop of day into night's sudden shock --

A jolt too abrupt, a jump too steep

As being jostled awake from a two-decade sleep.


Aunt Shecky
All rights reserved.

[Pendragon]

221B

Up seventeen steps and so to the door—
Nervous eyes darting everywhere, see?
The man with pipe talks as if he’s known you before—
Quite an interesting flat—221B.
Do not try to conceal your identity from his eyes,
He finds clues where others see little or none.
But don’t try to penetrate one of his own disguises,
And you make him angry and he'll have his own roguish fun.
Doctor Watson will be there to help at any rate,
And pul-lease, don’t mistake the man for a bungler.
Holmes would not burden himself if the man were second-rate,
And it takes skill for them to get away as burglars!
As you pass down Baker Street today you may hear it soft and thin:
Sherlock is still thinking and still playing that Stradivarius violin…

Pendragon
© 10/23/07

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Four/holmes.gif

[AuntShecky]

Ah! Unlike so many other "broken" threads begun by yours truly, someone jumped on this one. And Pendragon got the idea, too!
By the bye, do you know what specialty the physician Dr.
Watson was in? Methinks it was gastrointestinology:
"Alimentary, My Dear Watson."

[AuntShecky]

Walter D. Edmonds's novels are based in upstate New York. His better-known works were written before most of us were born, notably Drums Along the Mohawk, about the colonists' response to the American revolution, and Chad Hanna, an extremely interesting "niche" novel which is not only about the Erie Canal ("The Gateway to the American West"), the "underground railroad" in the pre-civil war era, but also traveling circus life in the 19th century. Both of these novels, perhaps others, were made into Hollywood movies starring Henry Fonda. I didn't have a particularly happy childhood, so I felt appreciation for that which could help me feel proud of something, anything -- such as the geographic state in which I grew up. Thus, I had affection for authors such as Walter D. Edmonds in my youth. His works (among other American authors) are deservedly praised in an important critical book, The Tavern Lamps are Burning, by Carl Carmer. So here's my little encomium to:

Walter D. Edmonds
(1903-1998)


Those of us for whom the term "upstate" covers
not merely the counties of Rockland and Orange
but the countries within countries in the rough
triangle spread out like a vast skewed "L";

and know what a "kill" is and how to pronounce
Dutch place names such as Valatie in a state
so crazy about the classics it named places
Ithaca, Syracuse, Ilion, Rome;

and swear by the gooseflesh on our shivering skins
that there's no storm fiercer than a Catskill storm
and firmly believing it was God's Hand
that shaped the Finger Lakes, splayed

south of the Great Canal, in some spots now
a ceremonial stream; and surmise that somewhere
deep beneath the pavement of the westbound Thruway,
unceasingly a-hum with cars, remain footprints

of the towline steeds and their freckled "drivers,"
prematurely stooped by the low bridge and the cane;
who scour memories from the Mohawk, humble river,
which may hear yet muffled muskets, detectable drums;

who found a northern Faulkner (with more laughs)
in one who transcended the novel of history,
so much more than a vehicle for homespun stars:
for us, the tavern lamps are burning, still.

Aunt Shecky
All rights reserved.