Tomorrow’s flowers, in the main,
Rely upon today’s dull rain.
So any life’s ungentler whiles
Germinate its future smiles.
by Ray Romine Sunday, April 30, 1950
Category: Poems
Ray Romine Poems
Sour Gripes?
My wrinkled brow and high-held nose
At puns you spring (the very worst)
To those who know me best disclose
I wish I had thought of them first.
by Ray Romine Sunday, December 17, 1950
Sour Grapes, Maybe?
For thirty years I envied those
Whose wives wore fifteen-dollar hose;
Who had the means to travel far
In iridescent motor-car;
Who smoked their 50ยข cigars,
And lined their basement rooms with bars ;
Whose sons and daughters went to college
To steep themselves in kinds of knowledge
On how to be so rich and foxy
That they might do their work by proxy!
But NOW I’m rather glad that I
‘m a self-reliant sort of guy!
I thought it fun to hire it done,
But now I’m not so sure–
Help can’t be had, which makes it bad
If you’re mechanically immature!
Though help is scarce, I carry on:
I hoe the garden, mow the lawn;
I sickle at the noxious weeds;
Wipe my own nose, and press my tweeds;
I make the beds, and change the baby;
Fix the plumbing–(fix it maybe)–
I scratch the match for my cigar;
I wash my cheap (but TIREless) car;
I am a brass and nickel burnisher;
I wax the dining and kitchen furnisher;
I shine my shoes and tie the strings,
Do other little kindred things;
I scrub, I glue, I fix, I paint–
And all because my money ain’t.
Though socially classed as minus pelf,
I’ve learned to do things for myself!
In spite of which, the idle rich
Retain their smug allure;
Yes, though I boast, I’d rather coast
And be less things done, than poor!
by Ray Romine Saturday, July 31, 1943
Soul of Mischief
The winds of March are hectic winds
That threaten as they blow;
They scurry into corners where
Angels fear to go.
They cut and sting and roar and howl
And play chess with the clouds;
They whip the clothes and bow the heads
Of home-bound leaning crowds.
But March winds have a better side
In spite of pranks! They shoo
King Winter to his frigid lair,
And send me spring–and you.
by Ray Romine Saturday, October 14, 1950
Sorry Picture
Insistently the earth is rent
By loud and fearful clamor;
The males find them power-bent–
The females cry for glamour.
Unchecked by more than casual notes,
Populations mount;
But cannon-fodder and the votes
With politicians count.
All conservation common-sense
Is lost for “Get the Money.”
The situation grows intense:
Comedians laugh. It’s funny.
Last bug, upon a rock, some day,
Surveying barren land,
Will rise above himself to say,
“So hard to understand.”
by Ray Romine Tuesday, February 26, 1952
Sorrow Contemplated
Great unthinkable empty gulfs
Yawn as the time approaches;
Life’s frill colors shall blanch and fade
When loneliness encroaches.
“Face the fact”, I can hear you say,
“And parting can never harm you” —
Still, as Time speeds across his stage,
Does it not, sweet, alarm you?
Mind so tortured can never rest;
Stretched ahead frowns trouble:
Future without you is just a vast
Hopeless and hollowed bubble.
Bubble? Yes, but a bubble rare–
Your face, forever, is mirrored there….
by Ray Romine Thursday, January 13, 1944
Sonnett
The nights are hardly long enough for me.
Each minute is a madly flapping wing
Which has some vital message I can’t see,
It flies so swiftly. When I try to sing
My simple songs here in the quiet lee
Of evening’s hush, the baleful numbered ring
Of figures on the clock becomes a blur,
So fast the moving hands. But in the day,
My dragging leaded feet keep time with her
Who soars the tireless blue in search of prey
In slow, high turn that just the wind may stir–
So move the sunlit hours with feet of clay
To change to swifter tempo as the light
Fades into quickly gathered welcome night.
by Ray Romine Thursday, January 20, 1944
Sonnet Attempt
Considering all from Heaven I receive,
The host of blessings in my life’s design
My country–proud I am to call it mine–
Where men may think and talk as they believe;
Our cheerful home with honeysuckled eave,
Where laughter reigns in evening as we dine;
The woods in May: each fur-tipped bud a shrine;
And fields of June; and snow on Christmas eve,
I realize that many things, both sad and gay
Have slowly built, down through the years for me
A lifetime, layer new succeeding layer.
And if as time rolls on I fail to say,
“For things I have, O Father, thanks to Thee”,
I never really find my God in prayer.
by Ray Romine Sunday, May 16, 1943
Sonnet
I know, sometimes, that I expect too much
Of life. No man can quite escape the toil
He calls his heritage: those hours that spoil
The best of all his days, and leave their touch
On what is left him. No, the avid clutch
Of dark fatigue the worker best will foil
Who can himself wholeheartedly embroil
In some small blessing quite disguised as such.
So long as I, then, feel a pulse’s beat
At sight of autumn-tinted leaf, or thrill
Completely to a thrasher’s song, or meet
Some poet’s lofty thought, my soul is still
My own; and I shall call life worth the while
For just that inch of joy in every mile.
by Ray Romine Sunday, October 15, 1944
Song To Be Moaned In October
The leaves are falling to the ground;
They hardly make the smallest sound.
The noise I hear, unless mistaken,
Escapes from him who does the rakin’.
Which makes it difficult discerning
Whether raker or rakee is burning.
by Ray Romine Thursday, October 4, 1951