Selections from Trella Romine's library at Terradise Nature Center
When I was told that exercise
Might lift me from the rut,
I used the common alibis:
Well…, Maybe, If, and But.
Still, take up sports I did, and I’m
Convinced now that who must
Stick tightly to their alibis
Do not wear out–they rust.
by Ray Romine Monday, April 23, 1951
He is a cross upon a hill,
Who smiled and talked and worked and played.
Inspired, entirely undismayed
He lives (within our hearts)–and will.
by Ray Romine Tuesday, October 24, 1944
Maybe I’m romantic, but the firs snow seems to me
About as near perfection as we shall ever see.
Tumbling, swirling snowflakes, that blanket sordid earth–
White and pure and stainless as the air that gave them birth.
What else is there in Nature: flowers, birds, or trees,
Or lonely stars, or butterflies, or lazy drone of bees
To equal in its beauty, its solemn, white-lipped song,
The appeal to every human, that the first snow brings along?
In this covering all the dirty world, a lesson I can see:
If God can whitewash all its sins, there’s hope for even me!
by Ray Romine Tuesday, November 10, 1936
Comes darkness, and cold gray cloud lurkers
Transform themselves to fairy workers,
Busy, eager, so the lawn
Is Santa Claus Land for the dawn.
by Ray Romine Monday, November 19, 1951
The complicated life is gone:
The winter’s nightmare fling.
Now is heard, above it all,
The gentle voice of spring.
The tyrant has been kow-towed to
Long enough as king–
Rebellion is upon him now:
I hear the voice of spring.
When desperation nears the end,
The flippant blue-bird’s wing
Beats upon the living air
The azure song of spring.
Reluctant to leave other sleeps,
I like awakening
To that persuasive just-heard sound:
The cloud-born voice of spring.
by Ray Romine Monday, September 17, 1951
At twenty two I’ve had enough
Of punching whiskers that are tough,
And if at this yet early date
I gripe and swear at unkind fate,
What kind of guy’ll I turn into
Along about, say, eighty two?
by Ray Romine Friday, January 13, 1933
The soap is at the lavatory
If I’m in the tub;
When I ‘m at the lavatory
The soap’s not. There’s the rub,
It seems to me our swear-and-wrath-room
Would be best as a two-cake bathroom…
by Ray Romine Thursday, April 6, 1950
That point has now been reached where for the few things
left for which you pay no tax,
You have to diplomatic wax,
And secure a written permission
From a Board or some Commission.
If you want to tighten the valve on your steam radiator, or hang a picture,
You have to ask Washington through a Congressman, or some other ficture.
A friend of mine, because he had to wait two weeks on permission to have a bathroom leak repaired, became an amphibian;
And, although he had always been considered more of a poor fish than a swimmer, won himself at the sport a blue ribian.
And another, because no grant to put a new handle on his lunch bucket was handy,
Did a fast that put completely to shame the good Mahatma Ghandi.
Tat for tit, and tit for tat.
Permission for this, and permission for that.
And it’s most inconceivably inconvenient at times, for it’s common knowledge that a refrigerator always fails in the hottest weather, and a furnace in January,
To catch the unwary. Or even the wary. Disgusting, very.
And a chap who sits for 31 days in a furnaceless house in Jan.
Awaiting a permit to fix said furnace, is apt to wind up a
frozen-face, or maybe a dead-pan.
They won’t be able to tell a Yankee from his Chinese cousin across-the-sea if one fails
To get a dispensation to trim his nails.
Or slack his sails.
Or wear his tails.
Or clean his pails.
Or date his frails.
Don’t hesitate when you want to empty that waste-basket
To hunt up the proper Board and its permission asket Although it is still unrestricted I sense
Soon it will be illegal to laugh without a license.
I can see pnly one way to treat all this with the proper
derision:
Get authority to sit on the Board that passes out the permission.
When it comes down to where you have to ask for and wait on
permission to burp,
A couple of fellows in our office are destined to blow urp.
Which proves quite definitely that, if we take the trouble to turn it over and look at the right side
Even the darkest of clouds has its bright side!
by Ray Romine Sunday, May 9, 1943
The guy who does upholstering
This chair has never seen:
It’s a sort of pre-conditioner
For WORSE one, what I mean!
A magazine is on my lap,
Passe as Dodo-feed;
But no one cares how old it is–
We just PRETEND to read.
My hands are somewhat sweaty;
I tremble and I shake;
I’ll bet that Harvard’s seismograph
Will register my quake!
I sort of wish I might have shaved;
A pretty chick’s across–
But then I sense she’s pretty sure
That I’m a total loss.
I hope that guy he has inside
Takes doctor all the night–
And yet, he’d better get to me
Before I die of fright!
What’s happened to that tooth that gave
Me heck from dusk to dawn?
For now that I’m up here, I find
The pain is less–IT’S GONE!
finis–(mine!)
Well, here I am–I’m in the chair.
No matter what he does,
It can’t be half as painful
As that AWFUL WAITING WAS!
(and actually (all but
one verse) written in
Doc Kissell’s waitingroom
by Ray Romine Saturday, November 20, 1943
While she is gone, there should be a reprieve,
But none exists that I can now perceive,
Since others take her place to such effect
That I am still unable to direct
My life along the way that I believe.
So, all the peace and quiet I receive
Are insufficient, even, to relieve
The pall of pleasures–which I should reJect
While she is gone.
And yet, who would these pleasures all unweave,
So he might sit in silence, would deceive
His very conscience, and he would neglect
The only thing he’s trying to protect:
Contentment isn’ t easy to achieve
While she is gone.
by Ray Romine Wednesday, August 14, 1946