March verses

[AuntShecky]

Comes in Lyin’, Goes Out on the Lam


It’s following the camp,
hanging round the base--
with a wink and a breeze
at us, still shivering and damp
with a late cough and a sneeze.
It may tiptoe out of a bunker
like some trollop on the tease.

We're tired of phrases “hunker
down.” “When will it be over?”
So we seek the crocus ‘neath the snow
and under ice blocks, clover.
We declare the truce, peace or no,
before winter’s army has split.

Spring is not a perfumed tart
seducing the cold to quit.
Instead it’s an AWOL grunt at heart,
ready to march but afraid to commit.

[Pendragon]

"AWOL Grunt" eh, Auntie? Few it is that I have heard call actually them that. I have heard they got the nickname from the sound a soldier makes jumping off a truck under full gear. As for AWOL, let me tell you a tale.

I grew up with three brothers. The older two were fairly good guys but the youngest was a wild buck. He got into so much trouble that he made the town pretty hot to hold him so he joined the Army. After about 8 months he went AWOL and came back to his oldest brother's house to "hide out". Yeah, he could stay there. His brother got him drunk until he passed out, called the Army Reserve Station and got him picked up and demanded his finder's fee! :lol:

[PrinceMyshkin]

I love the sense of play throughout this, the way you keep challenging yourself to find a rhyme and then, just in the nick of time, you come up with one, but if there were nothing else but this



Spring is not a perfumed tart
seducing the cold to quit.


in it, I would love it for that!

[AuntShecky]

Great anecdote, Pen, and thank you, Prince. I value highly
the opinions of both of you.

[jon1jt]

There's something missing in this, Aunty, I'm not sure if I'm misreading it or what it is. At first I thought you were personifying something---the "It." But then I wasn't so sure. There's just not enough here for me to go on. I think it's the last two lines that really mystify and threw me.

The writing itself is very good, that's obvious. You take great care in putting your lines together. The content is rich and the flow normally terrific, like your Christmas poem.
I'll come back and try again.

[AuntShecky]

It's just a "light verse," Jon, nothing meant to be profound
or requiring intense re-reading. It's just that we are all so sick of winter! I bet you are too, over in the Snow Belt.

[kiz_paws]

Aunty, the title alone was a gem in itself. :nod: You have really caught the feeling of having had enough of winter. Your writing is beautiful, witty, and makes me smile. Thank you. :)

[AuntShecky]

Thanks, Kiz. Bet it's cold on the Canadian prairie as well.

[jon1jt]

It's just a "light verse," Jon, nothing meant to be profound
or requiring intense re-reading. It's just that we are all so sick of winter! I bet you are too, over in the Snow Belt.


I'd like to think that light verse is profound too. Eh what the hell I'll read it again anyway. :)

Oh yes---snow belt it is--- I've been buried out here in the white stuff, tell me about it! It's actually gotten to the point that when there's no snow on the ground it appears like there's something wrong. :lol:

[firefangled]

Aunty, this cheered me up just right. In Florida we don't have much cold, much to my dislike. We have rainy gloomy days like today. However, even though we do not have them here, you have invoked the crocus! Spring will be soon.

[symphony]

Loved it, Aunty. This line

We declare the truce, peace or no,somehow made me think of a famous bengali saying- "whether the trees have bloomed or not, spring is here".

[AuntShecky]

Thanks, Symphony and your epigram reminds me of another one apparently popular in Great Britain:
"It doesn't matter whom one votes for because the government always gets in."

[TheFifthElement]

Thanks, Symphony and your epigram reminds me of another one apparently popular in Great Britain:
"It doesn't matter whom one votes for because the government always gets in."

I've never heard this. Perhaps it's apparently popular for Americans to think this is popular in UK?!!

[jon1jt]

I've never heard this. Perhaps it's apparently popular for Americans to think this is popular in UK?!!

Well, Americans think they know many things (this is no slight against my sister Aunty though). America starts wars too. There's a sense of privilege, what do you expect? :p

[ampoule]

Loved it! The title, all of it. You have certainly pegged the little tease hanging around these here parts. And something about the shivering and damp made me think of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. lol

[AuntShecky]

Aubade for Early Spring

A ribboned basket
full of dawn
treats the world
to Easter pastels.

[AuntShecky]

In Clover

Like leaping leprechauns,
shamrocks dance
a lucky jig
across the lawn.

Pick one
and see three
round heads
of little people.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Lovely! If you could do all that in just 23 words, I wonder what you might do with 24?

[AuntShecky]

<deleted

[AuntShecky]

In open, rhymed couplets, some of which refuse to scan.
So sue me.


Spring is Coming, So They Tell Me

As soon as it stops snowing, the ice will begin to sag
from plow-built bunkers conceding an off-white flag,

and the wind-scarred trees will give birth to baby leaves
whose rust-tinged ancestors still lie clumped in guttered eaves.

A few waking lawns and pot-holed pavement on the street
will sigh under the softer press of less-heavily shod feet.

Because it’s better to make it to first base than to burn,
boys’ thoughts, free of fancy, will eventually turn

to love and baseball games, though not quite in that order.
Shy buds will poke their heads up in rows along the border

of a near-forgotten path lately melting into sight.
Fat days, getting fatter, will bite a bigger slice of light.

It’s still dark here, where it’s always gray and ever-dim,
where dreams drip into oblivion like a never-granted whim.

“Unrealized potential” echoes the pathos in the sound
of a whining fledgling, off the wing and on the ground.

Each well-intended word somehow gets misconstrued
as an ill-spoken screed: brash, impertinent, and rude.

Like a persistent Javert with his constant frown,
Trouble never stops. It seeks me out and hunts me down.

(So much for the hounds sniffing winter’s traces.)
I've pulled up bootstraps until they flapped with broken laces.

Despite the wavy up and downs scaling The Economy,
On this chart all the years stand stock still in poverty.

Too commonly-crowned as the poets’ favorite season,
This Pretender to Hope’s Crown rules with banished reason.

While the higher-reigning sun has altered past winter’s tense
to present Spring, I fail to see the difference.

[PrinceMyshkin]

In open, rhymed couplets, some of which refuse to scan.
So sue me.

My people will be in touch with your people!

But, deft as this is everywhere else, you cannot, must not, attempt to rhyme "tense" with "difference." Even origami or Seventh-Day Adventist might be a better rhyme.

[AuntShecky]

Tour-a Lure-a

“I’m enjoying my trip to the Emerald Isle,”
Mary Beth said with her stateside smile
O’er her Harp Beer and Guinness Stout,
“But when do the leprechauns come out?”

To which the Keeper of the Pub
Replied, as he gave her tipsy head a rub:
“Sure, an’ you’ll be seein’ the wee ones, Lass,
If you keep tippin’ that mighty glass!”

[AuntShecky]

My people will be in touch with your people!

But, deft as this is everywhere else, you cannot, must not, attempt to rhyme "tense" with "difference." Even origami or Seventh-Day Adventist might be a better rhyme.

why not? It scans:
WINter's TENSE
DIFferRENCE

[kiz_paws]

Tour-a Lure-a

“I’m enjoying my trip to the Emerald Isle,”
Mary Beth said with her stateside smile
O’er her Harp Beer and Guinness Stout,
“But when do the leprechauns come out?”

To which the Keeper of the Pub
Replied, as he gave her tipsy head a rub:
“Sure, an’ you’ll be seein’ the wee ones, Lass,
If you keep tippin’ that mighty glass!”
Loved it! As the clock ticks on to the big day! :)

p.s. The weather WAS of a melting sort (around one degree Celcius), however, there is a setback and it is going down to minus twenty-three Celcius this evening. If only the skating rink hadn't gotten demolished in the melt, I'd be pleased as a leprechaun meself! :nod:

[AuntShecky]

Seeing Peter Cottontail hoppin' down the Bunny Trail with intense difficulty (in snowshoes) led me to pen this little bit of doggerel (http://www.answers.com/topic/doggerel):



When Easter Comes Early

Some years it comes late, some years too soon.
It depends on the Equinox and the first full moon.
The dress shirts are frozen, they don't need starch,
when Easter Sunday comes in March.

The store-bought outfits with springtime frill
get crushed under parkas made for this chill.
We'd love some daffodils and lilies by the bunch,
but a late spring blizzard beat them to the punch.

Though holiday bouquets are wilted and dying,
we have no fear of chocolate liquefying
from heat which is still a long way off
(We already know this from our sniffles and cough.)

An egg hunt seems like a festive way to go,
but they won't be found hidden deep in the snow.
By lore one might see the Easter dawn quivering,
but the sun isn't dancing– it’s only shivering.

But if you become jaded and cranky and surly
and gripe that this year’s Easter comes too early,
think back two millennia to that arid clime
when Easter first came – - exactly on time.

[AuntShecky]

Some Certain Sundays


Some certain Sundays
in long-ago springs
came by custom, all arrayed.
They gave grace
to little girls to wear
moist orchids
with fresh, romantic scents,
and even more fittingly
to be stuffed
into frocks of crinoline
stiff in soft pastels,
all innocence predestined
to bear stains
of chocolate sins
by end of day.

Such finery has since
by sackcloth been absolved,
and long litanies of Lent
have passed over
one little life
scourged by a thousand
small Gethsemanes,
and pressed by bitter oils.

Yet Miracle and Mystery
may at last come
under this roof, so unworthy.
The hope of spotting the sun
leaping into Paschal dawn
looms as beautiful and true.

[DickZ]

Gee, Auntie, Some Certain Sundays gives a great description of getting all dressed up for Easter. I hope people still do that, but I have to wonder. Even if they do, I doubt that it would match what was done years ago. Time marches steadily onward and we just keep making huge strides forward in our progress.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Oh! This is you in a deeper, somewhat darker and very moving vein! I felt my heart leap along with:




The hope of spotting the sun
leaping into Paschal dawn

[kiz_paws]

Seeing Peter Cottontail hoppin' down the Bunny Trail with intense difficulty (in snowshoes) led me to pen this little bit of doggerel (http://www.answers.com/topic/doggerel):



When Easter Comes Early

Some years it comes late, some years too soon.
It depends on the Equinox and the first full moon.
The dress shirts are frozen, they don't need starch,
when Easter Sunday comes in March.

The store-bought outfits with springtime frill
get crushed under parkas made for this chill.
We'd love some daffodils and lilies by the bunch,
but a late spring blizzard beat them to the punch.

Though holiday bouquets are wilted and dying,
we have no fear of chocolate liquefying
from heat which is still a long way off
(We already know this from our sniffles and cough.)

An egg hunt seems like a festive way to go,
but they won't be found hidden deep in the snow.
By lore one might see the Easter dawn quivering,
but the sun isn't dancing– it’s only shivering.

But if you become jaded and cranky and surly
and gripe that this year’s Easter comes too early,
think back two millennia to that arid clime
when Easter first came – - exactly on time.


What a wonderful poem this was! That last verse was perfect, thank you so much for the enjoyable read. :) Kizzo