Poetry

When I reach at end of day The hostel where I always stay A haven in Ohio woods I find you among my goods This time I ease you carefully Onto a nearby buckeye tree Check to see no thread attached Your colors are completely matched I can’t restore you to your home But you’re […]

My dad, aged 21, is about to set off overseas with his father’s blessing. Writes his younger brother who is contemplating Northwestern “Katherin Redson is okay. She is really a Princess. You would approve she is S, S & G: Sweet Simple and Good” Thus, Ronald leaves Northwestern and is off to the Continent, flinging […]

Dear Sibs, I expect reimbursement by Dad for most things, but here’s one bill he shouldn’t see.   The barn cats wane and wax, depending on the number of kittens. We got rid of some by taking them to a nearby farm. The mother cat, preferring the pickings here, came home over the field. They […]

My cousin Hazel much older than me had a beau, he moved from town but wrote her love letters. My great aunt, her mother, intercepted his letters and destroyed them all. My own grandma told me this story when I was much older; I was appalled. Should I tell Hazel, forever unmarried? I decided it […]

When I was teaching at Kent State, we ate at a dorm: I thought it would improve family conversation, manners, and save me work. The kids preferred to talk with college students and when I saw one kid pick up a handful of mashed potatoes and smear it down her face I thought, “so much […]

Everyone sleeps but I am risen with the sun, and the grass wets with cold and freshness above my knees, softly then under the trees through the fence. Down now, to be seen is to be caught. Scramble up a cliffside scraping, stinging, and brambles hold me down. The trees at the top are quiet […]

My friend, Rodd Whelpley, has discovered various farm cams online but, he says the viewer can’t experience what you did growing up on the farm. “One can’t hear the whoosh of the milk as it leaves the udders, smell the cow patties that the animal drops, feel the hair on the backside of the cow, […]

In England “ert” is pronounced “art” so I lived in “Barkshire” I lay on my back on a sunny hill listening to a skylark.  Our eighth-grade teacher had us memorize Shelley’s Skylark poem, the first verse, not because she knew about “art” but because the last line contains a six syllable word, “unpremeditated,” remarkable by […]

Elspeth, 10: “Oh mother I love kissing kittens under the arms!” Elspeth, 10: “Aargh! I hate finishing a good book!” Jill, 17, peeling a potato: “Here is its stem. Potatoes always seem so self-sufficient. You don’t think of them as having stems.” Jill, 17: “I have to write a Canterbury tale tonight. How long did […]

Everyone sleeps but I am risen with the sun, and the grass wets with cold and freshness above my knees, softly then under the trees through the fence. Down now, to be seen is to be caught. Scramble up a cliffside scraping, stinging, and brambles hold me down. The trees at the top are quiet […]