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The Last Fly

The snow is here–the birds are gone,
But still the last fly lingers on.
He don’t-know when he’s licked at all:
He should have died away last fall,
But there he is, a-zooming still;
Swooping here and there at will,
With lazy, vicious, angry buzz–
As mean a sound as ever was.
He’s had a lot of narrow squeaks,
But he lives on for weeks and weeks.
Tried to starve him–can’t do that,
Through rigid diet, he grows fat!
Sprays and swatters, you’d perceive
Just make him titter up his sleeve;
I’ve tried to kill him every way,
But he’s in best of health today.
If he’d just hibernate ’til spring,
That would settle everything–
But he must dip, and zoom, and buzz,
Which simply can’t go on, becuz,
To use an old, old, oft-used line,
It’s GOT TO BE HIS LIFE OR MINE!!!!

by Ray Romine Tuesday, September 13, 1938

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Question

We raise bees,
And they make honey;
We raise bees,
And we make money.

But I don’t see
(If you know, please say)
How Mrs. Bee
Collects HER pay.

by Ray Romine Thursday, February 4, 1954

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Ode To, Perhaps, Malacosoma Americana

I think that I shall never see
What caterpillars do to a beautiful tree,
That I don’t ask, between you and me,
Why God eyer bothered to make the tree.

Poems by me get louder and sillier,
But only God builds the caterpilliar.
Be that as it may, I find me wishin’
That He never has any competition!

by Ray Romine Monday, August 9, 1943

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Mosquito

She knows dive-bombingl Long before mere man
Developed it, she brought it from the mud.
With nothing of the playful in her clan,
She lets you know at once she’s out for blood!

by Ray Romine Tuesday, June 9, 1953

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Lines To A Six-legged Fiend

Fly, your antics quickly pall:
Kindly go elsewhere and crawl.
Take your loudly buzzing wings
Where the Rappahannock sings.
While you have them still unfurled,
Take off, varmint, see the world.
Visit Congo; meet the Lap–
I, my germy friend, would nap.
Ps-st–I know where not a class
But a SUNDAY SCHOOL picnics en masse.
Nothing, their motto says, can daunt ’em.
Why don’t you, old pest, go haunt ’em?

by Ray Romine Tuesday, February 16, 1954

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Insect Lesson

I found, this summer past, here where I stand,
The dainty creature called the bella moth–
Its pink and yellow living contraband
Contrasted with the season’s greening sloth.
Where is it now? This fragile, too-weak thing
Is gifted with a spirit which belies
Its frail appearance, outmanoeuvreing
Our mighty winter many times its size.
For in some icy nook that spirit lives
And sleeps its pupal life below the sod,
Secure, until the summer’s coming gives
It happy life among the goldenrod.
Man’s spirit, too, is first and always free,
And will, in time, emerge triumphantly.

by Ray Romine Tuesday, April 11, 1944

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Honey Makers

No flower suits a bee for very long.
Bees are impatient, energetic things,
Questing, testing, almost never wrong
In choosing msctar for those fairy wings!

They’re scratching when the autumn flowers close;
They itch until the first spring one arrives.
It is presumptious of me, I suppose,
To ask if this is caused from having hives?

by Ray Romine Thursday, February 4, 1954

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Honey Bee

From flower after flower,
The clear-winged buzzing bee
Gathers pollen and nectar
As long as she can see.

Then she herself must carry it
All the way home,
Where she makes it into honey
And stores it in the comb.

She has no time for playing,
Nor movies nor TV.
No wonder that they call her
[Which, of course, is why they call her]
The “Busy” little bee!

by Ray Romine Wednesday, April 22, 1953

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Fly, Fly!

0 fly that zings and swoops and dips,
I wish you warts upon your hips,
B.O., flat feet and poison ivy
For being insolent and divey.
Noah should have quickly swatted
When your two great-grandfolks he caughted.
He must have suffered some from boredom
Utterly to have ignored ’em.
He willed me you–you and your spouse
Specking here and there my house,
And hence I’m forced to say you rate
Some really rather dreadful fate–
Say hang-nails, toothache, baldness, bunions,
And breath that reeks of opened onions.
I hope you fail, and hit the skids,
And have less than a million kids!

by Ray Romine Wednesday, September 5, 1951