Selections from Trella Romine's library at Terradise Nature Center
Ray Romine Poems
Sis came in from playing
With mud upon her shoes;
Brother scattered popcorn;
And father dropped the News;
Baby spilled his bottie;
The kitten broke a vase;
The dog helped out by strewing
Bones about the place.
Advice for young homemakers?
Mother has this gem:
Learn picking things up faster
Than the family scatters them!
by Ray Romine Tuesday, January 15, 1952
It’s true, perhaps, no fool unborn
Will ever quite produce such corn
As I turn out. It has a lure
For which, it seems, there is no cure.
(Excuse me, if I blow my horn)
Yet every day, in early morn,
I from my verse am rudely torn
To go to work. That IT’S more sure
Is true, perhaps.
Some distant day, retired, forlorn,
When I’m too old and tired and worn
To even think of literature,
With all the time I can conjure,
Will I wish I had my job to scorn?–
It’s true, perhaps!
by Ray Romine Thursday, April 13, 1944
You wash the car,
And sure as sin, those
Splatters will
Smear up the windows.
But if you wash
The windows, say,
The body turns
A mottled gray.
Sometimes, it’s true, I wonder whether
I shouldn’t wash the two together.
by Ray Romine Saturday, August 20, 1949
While he who takes a little flyer
With truth risks being called a liar,
Who fibs politely finds his act
Referred to with respect as tact.
by Ray Romine Saturday, October 7, 1950
I always imagined I didn’t like reunions for the reason
That they try to take every beautiful Sunday in the middle
of the summer season;
I thought family dinners weren’t suited to my mood
Because of the overabundance of uncles and the comparative
underabundance of food;
And I considered my horror of picnics due
To potato salad, plus the ants and flies that picnic on me,
but never seem to bother you.
Even when the wife’s Garden Club held Family Night, I put the blame
For my desire to absent me on my inherent dislike for
plant names with more syllables than a Russian diplomat’s name.
Until the occasion when a child hit me in the neck with a wilted ice-cream cone at one of these gatherings,
When it dawned on me that I’d been dreading this all my life,
and that I’d turned into an ogre who can’t stand the
Little Dears with their unchildish pranks, precocity,
and blatherings.
Hence, I will say in conclusion, that I maybe could endure such assemblies
If it weren’t for the people with the large femblies…
by Ray Romine Sunday, April 8, 1951
O come, let us visit the country;
Leave civilization go hang.
Knee-deep in clover, We’ll really take over
With the rest of the citified gang.
We ‘ll picnic all over the county;
We’ll rush in where angels won’t tread.
The pretty landscape we will artfully drape
With eggshells and napkins and bread.
We’ll fish where it’s posted “No Fishing.”
We’ll take along rifle and dog,
For there are the chickens which run like the dickens,
Or, if your’re a poor shot, a hog.
Let’s go, for there’s fun in the country,
Whatever the season or time,
With pears, apples, grapes in all sizes and shapes,
And furlongs of fences to climb.
So off for the Wide Open Spaces;
Back out the jalopy and load.
NO, NOT A FLAT TIRE!! nothing raises my ire
Like the things some guys leave in the road.
by Ray Romine Tuesday, June 16, 1953
For little things they sey are free
Wifey loves to send away–
And that should be O.K. with me:
A dime is all she’s gotta pay.
But it takes a BOX-TOP too,
And they have breakfast food beneath ’em:
“Puffie-Popps”, and “Crinkled-Foo”—
And fam’ly does to ME bequeath ’em.
They want the roses , glads and mums
That blossom in the ads they see,
And think not of the grief that comes
Thru munching colored hay, to ME!
Indigestion hurts me some–
But lay me down and die I can’t–
For when the bulbs and posies come ,
I’LL have the doggone things to plant!
by Ray Romine Thursday, April 22, 1943
Here is the the item that brings such pain
To a parent attempting to be just:
It isn’t so hard to make children refrain
As it is to expound the reason they must.
by Ray Romine Tuesday, September 9, 1947
If there’s one thing I can’t abide,
It’s ice which causes me to glide;
If fate would take my little tip,
There’d be no snow on which to slip,
For nothing makes me flip my lid
Like frosty stuff on which to skid.
I much prefer my world unslidy–
And bottoms up is never tidy!
by Ray Romine Monday, October 8, 1951
Indoors or out, with or without,
In foul or gentle weather,
Pooh to the clime, so I have time
To rhyme two lines together.
Though smart folk save and sweat and slave
To stack a heap of money
I’ll live and die like the butterfly–
The bees can have their honey.
I shall never be sure
Till they lay me to rest:
In the nice ear of Nature,
Which bug is the best?
by Ray Romine Thursday, July 5, 1945