Category: Weather

You’d beat the heat? The best prevention, it
Seems to me is not to mention it .

7- 6-1949
(about 98 in the shade)

by Ray Romine Saturday, July 16, 1949

Earth has pulled a blanket round her,
To her chin, and yawned to bed;
Then I come along and shovel
Through to scratch her tousled head.
She arouses, turns and mutters,
“Make it snappy, son. I’m dead!”
She should. grumble; she should cry–
With this shoveling, so am I!

by Ray Romine Sunday, November 26, 1950

My hobby centers on the weather,
So count on me to tell you whether
Tomorrow will be foul or fair,
And just what weight of underwear
To don should you be feeling frisky,
Or if picnicing would be risky.
I often gauge the depth of snow
And Just which way the wind will blow
A day ahead. But let’s admit it:
I miss as often as I hit it.

by Ray Romine Saturday, December 16, 1950

If you’re one of those people who LOVE winter time,
And you gnaw on your nails, cold awaiting,
And you sit in your warm house and growl at the clime,
‘Cause it’s mild, and you want to go skating;

If an icicle’s just the most BEAUTIFUL thing,
And the snow’s too poetic to mention,
And you shout about pleasures that zero will bring,
Let me have, for a bit, your attention:

Get you out there–LIVE in it , and see if it’s fun–
No, not a mere walk before beddy–
Or, think when your period of playing is done,
“Could I love this for eight hours steady?”

If you work out-of-doors all twelve months of the year,
In the snow, on the ice, when it’s zero ,
With your lips turning blue, maybe losing an ear–
You still like it? O.K. , BE a hero!

If your winter experience to play is confined,
Or if just from the window you’ve spied it,
I shall say you’re not competent judge–do you mind?
You ‘ re talking to someone who’s tried it!

(OR–Neither’m I–let’s find someone whose tried it!)

by Ray Romine Sunday, January 4, 1942

An umbrella is a tricky thing–
I think you will concede it–
It’s in the way until the day
It’s raining and you need it.

And after it’s been found, it’s best
To wait up–never praise it:
You’ll feel a yen for swearing when
You try in vain to raise it.

Suppose it’s found, and raised: you play
That sturdy little Hollander
Who plugged the dike, but who would like
To try that with a colander?

by Ray Romine Thursday, May 3, 1945

Now is the time when all good men
Will find that pores ooze now and then.

While those possessed of education
Refer to this as perspiration,

Some, not erudite as yet,
Very often call it sweat.

But when it courses down my nose
I call it names I can’t disclose.

by Ray Romine Friday, April 7, 1950

Some fellow acquaintances work up a glow
Of honest excitement at autumn’s first snow.
My own super-charge, though, is never a vast one,
When it comes on to snow, if it isn’t the last one.
And at even the last snow my fervor rings hollow
Since who can be sure that just one more won’t follow?

by Ray Romine Friday, February 8, 1952

Now it Ain’t bad at all,
This here snow in the fall.
The first snow is pretty–but Gee!
When I see the effect
On the coal pile, by Heck–
Sweet summer sure sounds good to me!

by Ray Romine Thursday, September 6, 1934

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