Selections from Trella Romine's library at Terradise Nature Center
Ray Romine Poems
Some months are not so subtle. May,
As an example, flaunts her bloom;
October’s dress is over-gay;
December wears a Christmas plume.
But nature’s fairest, free of crowds,
Has never learned to gild real worth–
Beneath the fleeciest of clouds,
June wears the softest green on earth.
by Ray Romine Monday, January 4, 1954
Another white-hot angry dawn
Is marching up the sky
To enhance the reputation
Of a whiter-hot July.
And the mists across the lowland
In the fan-rays read their end,
As the weeds, relieved of dew-drops
Imperceptibly unbend.
The scarecrow holds one arm across
His unprotected eyes,
And stares in fascination
At the light-stirred, vicious flies.
One more ferocious brassy dawn
Goes striding up the sky
To pour a molten section
For the structure that’s July.
by Ray Romine Friday, July 6, 1945
The heat, a live thing, grows each day,
Hiding in some sidewalk crack
By night, until its parent sun
At dawn alerts a fresh attack.
Yet animated though it is,
Impossibly and fiercely stout,
Heat oddly is not tangible
Enough to do a thing about.
by Ray Romine Wednesday, January 6, 1954
Ah summer-time!.
How warm, how right.
How tough it is
To sleep at night.
How hard to dodge
What’s passing by:
July sale ad,
Mosquito, fly.
How to evade
All picnic food;
How ever find.
A working mood.
I find I am
A bit dismayed for
The summer which
All year I prayed for.
It’s true, it seems,
I like it hot
In January
When it’s not.
by Ray Romine Wednesday, January 23, 1952
I hate to hear him suffer so:
He’s dying, line by line.
His agony is nothing, though,
Alongside mine.
by Ray Romine Wednesday, February 27, 1952
I reach a nickel for the slot,
And half way there my arm is frozen.
I wanted music, yes, but not
The tune somebody else has chosen.
by Ray Romine Saturday, September 1, 1951
It rains alike, so rumor states,
Upon the just’s and unjust’s pates.
The thoughtful mind rejects this lie–
Whose raincoat keeps the unjust dry?
by Ray Romine Wednesday, March 18, 1953
Now there’s just one little question
That I’m asking myself now —
How the Heck can I write Jingles
When she’s on my mind- -and how!
by Ray Romine Thursday, January 25, 1934
He swore to write a verse a day
This week, this Romine feller;
But he bought a new jig-saw today–
You’ll find him in the cellar.
Well, what’s vacation for, if you
Can’t do the things you WANT to do?
by Ray Romine Wednesday, November 3, 1943
The New Year has been introduced again
With proper fanfare and publicity.
I drop at last in sheer exhaustion, when
The revelers proceeding home have left to me
Besides a New Year with their gayest wishes,
The carcass of the old one with their dishes.
by Ray Romine Monday, January 1, 1951