Category: Poems

Ray Romine Poems

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Company, Unlimited

I claim that my rudeness
Is out-ruded when
Folks come a-calling
The late side of Ten.

Or for rudeness try matching
Who says, with a sneer,
fShutting pooch in our basement)
“What CAN he hurt here?”

And am I uncouth who
Leaves food on the shelf
If the caller’s the type known
For helping himself?

And why blame the host who
But quietly smokes
While the guest entertains with
His thirty-odd jokes?

If you will, call me boorish!
He Is setting the pace
Who ringeth our doorbell–
I’m saving my face!

by Ray Romine Tuesday, September 15, 1953

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Company’s Comin’!

We’re disintegrating:
On guests we are waiting–
Oh surely they’ll come any minute;
An hour or over
We’ve looked each car over,
Hoping our friends would be in it.

Flo’s wearing the rug out,
She’s pacing the dug-out;
She’s fidgety, jumpy, and nervous.
She’s hither and thither;
She pauses a-dither
At the lunch she’s been hoping to serve us.

And as it gets later
Her tension is greater;
She fusses the lamp-shades and flowers.
She bounces, she stutters,
She prances and flutters,
As the minutes grow slowly to hours.

She re-does her make-up,
Gives curtains a shake-up;
She changes her gum and her lip-stick;
She straightens the fixtures,
Including the pictures,
And journeys a frantic elliptic.

“Oh how can we teach them–
What lesson would reach them,
Demonstrating inertia is folly?
The brain seems submitting
This thought as befitting:
We’ll serve them their breakfast”–how jolly!

by Ray Romine Friday, August 20, 1943

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Commonest

Say of the sparrow what you will,
He sits upon my Window sill,
Brown, self-assured small renegade:
The perfect beggar unafraid!

by Ray Romine Saturday, December 20, 1952

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Comfort Grain

My stride will take life’s black side;
I’ll stand beneath its woes;
I’ll tantrum not, nor back slide,
Can I but have one rose.

Let rigors of stern duty
Maul me as they may,
So one small touch of beauty
Rubs off on me each day.

by Ray Romine Friday, December 8, 1950

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Come Now, What Is Your Hypotenuse?

When I ask you the secret of your success,
(Huge car, mansion home, and fat larder)
It’s legerdemain I expect, I confess,
And not mere advice to work harder.
“Disdain paltry pleasures and shoulder the yoke!”
I know is the standard retort, but
I’m one of the millions of practical folk
Who’ll always believe there’s a short cut!

by Ray Romine Sunday, November 11, 1951