Category: Poems

When winter’s icy grip is on the earth
And sparkling stars of multi-colored gems
Laugh up from snowy drifts with eyes of mirth;
When each prosaic sidewalk with its hems
Of heaped-up architecture shows a gay effect
Hard to achieve except by accident;
When every howling wind’s a fiend unchecked,
So merciless his rage, so violent;
Then, let me watch the swiftly setting sun
That forms the stumbling shadows of outspread
And moaning trees, which are a garrison–
A starving one, its hands above its head.
That futile sun, for all it lacks in might,
Is summer’s torch, and August’s signal-light.

by Ray Romine Sunday, February 13, 1944

It is so cold the Chickadee,
Who knows no normal fears,
Sits quaking, his black stocking-cap
Pulled tightly on his ears.

by Ray Romine Tuesday, January 22, 1946

Down where the lazy river bends,
A hectic tide of fog descendse
The homely cows I’ve come to milk
Are moth cocoons of thin gray silk.
The ghostly ash that guards these lands
Looms suddenly with cluctching hands,
And missing, drips a fiendish splat
Unsteadily upon my hat
From fog-beads strung along each twig.
They dance a mad abandoned Jig
And eye me as my lantern swings.
I’m not one who imagines things,
Yet I’m suspicious of each log:
There’s menace, somehow, in this fog–
The soul of something, writhing, tied…
My milking’s done; I’ll go inside.
I can’t feel foolish, though, before
I slam the friendly kitchen door.

by Ray Romine Saturday, February 2, 1952