Poetry

(Chorus follows every verse, by students in a 1976 Fantasy Class) Wilbur and Charlotte and Templeton the rat; There goes Peter Rabbit with a beautiful white cat; From a distant asteroid came the Little Prince; Said we all must hurry now, a matter of consequence. Goin’ down to Narnia: just follow the yellow brick road. […]

Bliss My folks remodeled an old farmhouse a mile from the dairy when I was nine my cousin Paul architecture student was a laborer every noon the workers came down to eat dinner at our house then sprawled on couch floor lawn eyes shut for the rest of their break all but Paul he sat […]

Found my oldest sister’s well documented baby book the rest of us had semi-docs or no baby book at all in jo’s mom wrote an anecdote: “Little Joan, 3, had heard us speak of playing cards but had never seen a game. One day she called me that she had something to show me. I […]

When my sister Pat was asked why she started children on violin so early she replied, “That’s so they grow up thinking the violin is part of their arm!” 2024 Jacqueline Jackson

“A big storm like we had this week always makes me feel great! I like to buck a tough day. Tuesday morning at three o’clock we started out with men and horses to get the milk through. Trucks wasn’t worth nothin’ in them drifts ’till we got the road broke. A job like the milk […]

My dad sometimes went to grade school in town. Once while there he printed a blueprint newspaper; sold it after school for a nickel. It contained a syllogism: “We go to school to improve our faculties; Our teachers are our faculties; Ergo, we go to school to improve our teachers.” Miss Glenn the principal suggested […]

Revenge Poem Maybe I wrote this before: but my brother and his buddies played an old trick on the official who fired all the women administrators after World War II: they put a juicy cow pie in a paper bag, put it on the official’s porch, set the bag on fire, rang the doorbell, then […]

It is inanimate, a piece of wood Fashioned, glued, with strings Tightly strung from scroll To tail-gut. It is taut, stable In tension, vibrant, nervous But still, until I take it in my hands And give it life. It takes My soul and is more truly me Than voice, or laugh, or kiss, Or even […]

My father-in-law feeds the birds 1953 After we kids left, my father-in-law wrote: “Dear Kids, Do you know that it seems terribly lonely around here already? before Sun-Down last night every scrap of waffle and leftovers had disappeared. So, I put out some more scraps and this morning was a host to the usual sparrows, […]

I saved this from an old newspaper so I can’t tell the date but here is what the editor of a Chicago newspaper wrote: J. Louis Guyon, proprietor of the largest public dance hall in the Midwest, said today “he would urge dance hall operators in the country to place a ban on the Shimmy, […]

They drained and cleaned the Y pool because a little kid pooped in it. Well, OK. But I think of our sweet little Vermont lake filled with fish that poop, turtles, ducks, geese, loons, frogs, clams, snails, beavers, and all manner of other critters including little kids at the public beach. Should we drain our […]