POETRY: Construction sites
CONSTRUCTION SITES
Hard hats of white
Big machines
Broken concrete
Cones and beams
Detour signs
Piles of clay
Closing lanes
Go or stay?
Lower speeds
Animals lost
Road repair
At such a cost
It's progress, vision
Urban sprawl
The future's here
Erect it all
Under construction
So are we
Up until eternity!
JEANNE RASCHKE
Lakeland
GOD'S MIGHTY HAND
“2020”
As death, fear and heartache covered our land,
where were you Lord? I want to understand.
Did you bring the Virus to show your
Mighty Power? Or to bring Man closer to
you in our desperate hour.
The Virus shut down (Our Country)
(The World) as death was
close at hand. The elderly, the
unhealthy ones, died across
this great land.
Lord I know we must trust in you to
bring us through this hour,
of death, pain and heartache for you
are out Maker, our Father our
Savior, with Love, Grace, and Power.
JEANIE BOYETTE
Winter Haven
SONNET TO SELF
My Friend, I tell you, do not suffer so,
Bending and unbending your mind in vain,
Seeking for styles, symbols you don’t yet know.
They’ve all been done and need not be again.
Pursue such matters, but solely for fun.
Enjoy them with relish, but with reserve -
Do not become the slave of any one.
Seek that which best serves you, that you deserve.
Slide smoothly into it like an old shoe
And thus relaxed, let your heart be at peace;
And all the right words will come unto you,
For you will have given your Muse release.
There! See how easy that was, after all?
You breezed through this sonnet without a stall.
ROBERT P. TUCKER
Lakeland
THE CAT WITH THE CROOKED TAIL
I’ll never forget the time
when we were sitting by the fireplace
watching the sparks fly in the air
Grandpa was rocking sort of slow
“half asleep,” don’t you know
When the tail of the sleeping cat slipped
under the rocker of the chair
The cat screeched a noise we’ve never heard before
Grandpa hollered, his teeth went flying
and bit our old hound dog on his tail
he woke up with a howl, you could hear it a mile
He started running with abandon
head first into an old metal pail
Well, I tell you I was just sitting here
Leaning back in my wobbly chair
Watching the commotion and the excitement of it all
The pail made a real big bang, Ma jumped and hollered dang
Then the pail hit Poppy’s shotgun leaning up against the kitchen wall
The gun fired when it hit the floor
and made a new window in the front door
Silence filled the room
as Ma reached for her favorite broom
I saw the danger coming and I was first out the door
I knew the broom would be swinging as she quickly cleared the room
Poppy was right behind me
followed by grandpa, the hound dog and the cat
It was a while before things settled down
and two days before the cat came around
We found grandpa’s teeth when the morning sun hit the ground
Poppy nailed a “No Hunting” sign over the new window in the door
Kind of gave the old place a touch of class, normal now is where we are at
except the hound dog sleeps across the room
with one eye slightly open, aimed at Ma’s dangerous broom
and the other eye is on grandpa and the crooked tailed cat
DENNIS C. ORVIS
Winter Haven
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This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Local poetry
