Category: Philosophy

When I grow weary waiting for those things
Which nature “owes” me just for being here;
When I am out of sorts with what earth brings
My way, then I am sure I do not gear
To cosmic cycles. The moon, the sun’s broad sweep,
And each shape in the interstellar sea
Have schedules each is duty-bound to keep:
How bother with an out-of-step like me?

But, stretching patient hands to winter’s sky,
A tree, ignored completely up to now,
Communicating silently, asks why
A man expects the universe to bow
To him. A tree’s philosophy is plain:
Endure and wait six months to live again!

by Ray Romine Friday, February 12, 1954

Wounds aren’t serious in our purses
If one excepts his own reverses.

by Ray Romine Monday, March 24, 1952

“First thoughts are often not the best”-
But I’m no first-thought hater;
They’re quite as good as all the rest
Should any not oome later.

by Ray Romine Saturday, July 8, 1950

We learn a little more each day
About our lives: that which surrounds us;
But we grow no smarter, sad to say,
For all our knowledge but confounds us!

by Ray Romine Monday, January 1, 1945

Every gnawing little worry,
Every trial, every care
May be, after all, an asset,
If it’s something we can share.

Every tear, with sadness streaming,
Is a blessing in disguise
If it, when the storm is over,
Brings the truth to loving eyes.

by Ray Romine Wednesday, August 1, 1945

Life’s little worries and life’s little woes
Are trifling beyond compare
If there’s faith in the future; love for each other,
And fun in the things we share.

by Ray Romine Monday, November 14, 1949

Along the ground the drying leaves
Hustle mournfully;
I hear them whispering as they slither,
“Whither, Higher Power, whither?
The end, what shall it be?”

Along the street I saw a man
Shuffle hopelessly;
I heard him mutter, as he stumbled,
“I think my God has somehow fumbled,
To make a this of me.”

Man, whose mind on reason borders,
Has little on the “lower” orders ..

11-26-44
(In Sunday School)

by Ray Romine Sunday, November 26, 1944

You can hammer, you can fight,
And if you possess the greed,
You can maybe get an ulcer,
Or possibly succeed.

But the man who survives
Is the one who makes a joke
Of the burden, the struggle,
The bridle and the yoke.

by Ray Romine Wednesday, November 22, 1950

Life’s finer gems- -its precious flakes–
Are there among the sand
For him who’ll spare the time it takes
To Just–hold out his hand.

by Ray Romine Wednesday, August 8, 1945

Of childhood, such a friendly time,
This much has stayed with me:
Of sitting with a friendly rhyme,
My back against a tree.

But what was in the spring of life
Is different in the fall–
For then you’ll find unfriendly strife,
Your back against—-a wall.

Don’t be a sucker, little man:
Stay a youngster, while you oan!

by Ray Romine Thursday, August 2, 1945