Category: Seasons

The goldenrod’s bright yellows indicate,
With ironweed’s purple, quite a gaudy type,
And August is. Beyond the pasture gate
There is a watermelon thumping-ripe.

As every ear-worm spawned by Satan knows,
The fields are full of red and yellow corn,
And small now, down between the husky rows,
A pumpkin-face is waiting to be born.

A Monarch butterfly in richest sheen
Stops on a zinnia, and sits embossed
In priceless art. Let August paint the scene-
Too soon she hands the brush to old Jack Frost!

by Ray Romine Wednesday, March 31, 1954

The “horizon’s haze”, one soon perceives,
Is brought on by cremated leaves.

by Ray Romine Saturday, September 8, 1951

Now that we’re raking
Leaves fast as they’re tuming,
Say we’ve cut out the baking
And taken on burning.

But inside the house,
While we’re out here toiling,
Is the fireplace. Next up
Is the season for broiling.

by Ray Romine Friday, September 18, 1953

Hard on the coattails of Winter,
Comes April, ebullient queen.

She laughs as she opens each bud-sheathe;
And clutters the place with her green.

She pooh-poohs the worries about her,
As happily dancing along

She touches the heart of all mankind,
And clutters that dull place with song.

by Ray Romine Sunday, December 21, 1952

She does not have the glamour
Of her sister months at all,
She is between the winter’s dazzle
And the golden glint of fall.

She is plain, and drab and greyish
With a mien sad and stark,
And her thirty melancholy days
Slip by without a spark.

Yet, since at each appearance
With her air of being bored,
She leads us straight to winter,
She can hardly be ignored.

by Ray Romine Sunday, August 8, 1954

What a nice putrescent spring!
It’s been more RAIN than anything
And then more rain, and thunder;
God controls the rain, they say–
But the way it looks to me this May
It’s gotten out from under!

by Ray Romine Sunday, May 16, 1943

Southward, southward goes the sun–
Mid-afternoon, and day is done.

Nature’s checking her deep-freeze;
Jack Frost chaps uncovered knees.

Other knees, except on Sundays,
Wrap themselves in woolen undies.

Smell that reek of alcohol?
That’s the car, not cousin Paul.

Junior has again turned scholar.
Coal just upped another dollar.

Leaves are letting go of trees,
And scorched, pollute the evening breeze.

Here’s the surest sign of all:
I’ve the sniffles: it is fall.

Perhaps the devil (if we bought ‘im)
Could find some GOOD to say of autimn.

by Ray Romine Monday, October 25, 1948

September’s poets, one believes,
Are men of leisure. I bequeath them
A month when I must rake my leaves
To cut the grass which lies beneath them.

by Ray Romine Saturday, September 27, 1952

There’re some who like spring, and still others take autumn
In spite of the lesson experience has taught ’em,
For here at our domicile both seasons burn us
When we must mow lawn while we’re firing the furnace.

by Ray Romine Thursday, February 8, 1951

There’s scarecely a season, I’ll admit,
That I’m not sick, as it ends, of it.
But as autumn goes, around me shapes
The faintest aura of sour grapes….

by Ray Romine Tuesday, August 22, 1950