Author: Ray Romine

The summer is almost a thing of the past,
The calendar’s nosing its way into fall;
But winter can hold no great terror for us,
Who’ve lived through this summer and survived it all.

The picnics with chiggers, and skeeters and flies
And boiled eggs and olives and pickles and stuff–
The fishing with couples who thought, for a fact,
They were finding at long last the “life in the rough.”

Sweating at work ’til it ran in our eyes–
Trips in the car with the sun burning down;
Mowing the lawn every day, so it seemed,
‘Til the sun finally turned it a beautiful brown.

Trying to sleep in an oven-like room
Which the insects would enter, in spite of the screens;
Washing the car, and then seeing it rain–
And most of the public sure know what that means.

So: we’re nothing scared of the cold winter’s blast–
More likely, we’ll shout, “Oh boy, winter at last!”

(Of course we’re not tickled to see winter come,
But we’re darned if we’re gonna admit it, by gum!)

Now we know it’s just sinful to get sick of seasons
The way that we do when they’ve been here awhile,
But winter, spring, fall, summer all have some reasons
For boring us stiff when they reach their last mile.

by Ray Romine Monday, September 12, 1938

This snowy scene about is not for me:
Each high-piled post– a gravestone for the world
That sleeps beneath. And there, white head bepearled,
An arbor-vitae bows in grief to see
No life around except the Chickadee
Who hunches to himself. All mutely furled
His perky cry, because the sun is curled
Somewhere behind gray clouds, indifferently.

Let those who will , declcare the praises of
This empty landscape: –paint my own in green
With cotton clouds and deep blue sky above,
The whole a-teem with life, alert and keen.
All winter to me doesn’t mean a thing
Beside one singing bud that heralds–spring!

by Ray Romine Sunday, January 7, 1945

If you see, as you look from your window,
Just leaves and mud and smoke-
Heed then, the leaf as it settles
To the sod from the stately oak.

Down at last with its fellows,
Its destination is clear:
To arise, reborn as a new leaf
Some other, more fanciful year.

To the Iris that brightens the May-time
This mud is the soil-stuff it needs;
It is home, food and protection
For uncounted thousands of seeds.

The spiral from neighbors’ chimneys
Is their smoke-signal fresh unfurled;
A message of glad reassurance
That all is well with their world.

What shows through the frame of your window?
The drab is a screen that will shift-
A drop for the drama of winter
The imagination can lift.

by Ray Romine Tuesday, November 15, 1949

The fellow who says Winter’s nice is just tryin’
To cover up fact with a lot of mean lyin’.

by Ray Romine Friday, December 1, 1933

All day the slowly settling snow
Has made of waiting lake and land
A oneness, till the distant blue
Blends with the whiteness near at hand.

Southwest, at dusk, the winter sun
In all his majesty unbends,
Reflecting from the virgin snow
One final blaze, and dark descends.

by Ray Romine Saturday, December 13, 1952

I envy bugs and beasties too,
For when their summer’s work is through
They hole right up and start to snore,
And miss this awful griping bore
CALLED WINTER!

I wish in winter I could sleep
Through all-the rain and snow and sleet–
‘Til flowers do bloom and birds do sing,
And miss the season just ‘fore spring
CALLED WINTER!

by Ray Romine Friday, April 7, 1933

How fiercely the wind blew this winter:
How constant the cold and the snow;
What eons dragged by us, awaiting
Spring’ s wary approach, shy and slow.
Endured we the winter-time’s hardships,
The blustering sleet and the ice,
Through faith in God’s hold on the seasons:
No year has seen winter come twice.

And so, when our troubles look darkest,
And winters of care ring us ’round,
The signs of cessation of worry,
Of God’s loving kindness, abound.

Our distress, and our woe, and our anguish
Are God’s, if to His Word we cling:
We know, that the winter, though bitter,
Can naught but make sweeter the spring!

by Ray Romine Wednesday, March 31, 1943