In a forest green and wild
I spied by a brook a little child
babbling a current of indistinguishable joys,
playing some little game, twigs and pebbles for toys.
In a jungle where jealousy's flame was fanned
I looked at the torrent that passed for a man,
of passions ablaze--that ran to and fro--
toying with people, using them, stones & sticks to throw.
In a steppe all barren and waste
I wandered, searching, in that lonely place
for someone to talk to, someone to hear--
someone to laugh, then solace my tears.
At the end of my life in a cultivated place
I thought there I recognized an old man's face--
furrowed the brow in contemplating the ground:
he looked up, his eye chuckled, my peace was found.
Mother Bunny, in her flow’ry Baking-Day Dress and apron, raised both her mitted paws and shrieked. Out the kitchen window she saw Robbie Rabbit running with the third of the Nummy-Yummy Carrot pies she’d baked today. Off he ran, Mother watching and scolding. This time “a little birdie” didn’t have to tell Mother anything.
“He’s going to get it now,” said Buster Bunny to Grandpa Rabbit, his paw guarding his words from Mother’s long ears.
“Looks to me like he’s already got it,” Grandpa answered with a wink.
On the window ledge sat the other 2 Nummy-Yummy Carrot pies so freshly from the oven. But two would not do! Leaves were budding, it was time for inviting Everybunny home for the annual Family Dinner. All kinds of Cousins and Kindred would be coming, and all were looking forward to Mother’s special recipe for Nummy-Yummy Carrot Pie.
“That Robbie!” Mother exclaimed, and she pounced her paws upon her hips to emphasize her perturbation and peevery. “When is he going to start thinking of others?”
Robbie ran on to his favorite Buckleberry Bush hideout, laughing all the way. How he loved to tease!
Just then he tripped. Splat! He fell flat, with his face in the pie. He lifted his face out of the pie with tears, not twinkles, in his eye.
“Owww! My nose!” he said, then with alarm, “I think it’s bleeding!” His head hurt, too. He started to get up to go wash his face in the pond, but he felt dizzy and fell down again. A fly flew about his face, looking for a good spot for a licking.
“Go away!” Robbie cried. He didn’t feel good at all. He didn’t want a fly buzzing about in his business, with his face covered in carrot pie and blood. His dizzy head was aching. He laid down and began to sob. The fly did not go away. It kept buzzing around, sneaking in a lick here and a dab there.
Robbie got angry. “Stop teasing me!” he yelled at the fly. The yelling made his head hurt more.
“But I love to tease!” laughed the fly.
“Well it’s not nice!” Robbie cried.
“But I thought you loved to tease,” mocked the fly. “I saw you take the pie and run laughing. I thought I’d follow and join the fun!”
“Well I’m not having any fun,” Robbie returned.
“But I am!” the fly laughed again, and teased even more as Robbie swiped at him with a left paw, and a right paw, and a left again.
“Just go away and leave me alone,” yelled Robbie.
“You go away, and leave me alone–with the pie!” grinned the fly.
“I will not,” said Robbie. He got up and picked up what was left of Mother’s beautiful pie. “I’m taking it back to Mother, and I’m going to help her bake another,” Robbie said firmly. His head still hurt, but it was full of decision. He knew teasing wasn’t fun for the one getting teased. He was not going to tease Mother any more. He was going to help her.
Mother Bunny, in her flow’ry Baking-Day Dress and apron, raised both her flour-y paws and shrieked. Out the kitchen window she saw Robbie Rabbit with the third of the Nummy-Yummy Carrot pies she’d baked today–at least what was left of it. It was all over his face and front–and his nose was bleeding!
Mother ran out of the kitchen and put one paw around Robbie, and with the other used her apron to wipe his face.
“Oh, Robbie, what happened?” she hugged him.
Tears kind of trickled from Robbie’s eyes as he told her the story.
“Mother, may I help you make another pie?” he asked. “And I won’t tease you any more.”
“Oh, Robbie,” Mother cried, “of course you can.”
Robbie began to think of other pies, and other people.
“Look, Momma, I’m making ice cream,” Jeffy proudly proclaimed to his mother, who was planting a rainbow of spring flowers in her garden. He whirled the pedals of his upturned tricycle. Momma smiled at her creative boy, though she didn’t look over to see.
“That sounds like just what I’ll need when I finish here,” she replied, and he beamed.
“I’m going to make lots. I’ll make them the colors of the rainbow like your flowers,” he spoke as he imagined bowls of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple ice cream. In his mind he put them together and giggled about stirring them all up. He didn’t know yet that such a mixture would come out brown as the ground.
After a few minutes Jeffy was tired of his work, and came to watch Momma.
“Can I help?” he asked, knowing from past experience that a kid should ask before digging in Momma’s garden.
“I wonder if you would get me a drink of water,” she dodged his offer.
“I need one, too,” he suddenly realized, and ran into the house. A few minutes later he brought her a glass that was less full of water at each stride as he bounced back to her. She was thankful for the invention of plastic glasses.
“I already drank mine,” he announced authoritatively.
Jeffy glanced around Momma’s garden. Suddenly he spied a hole. He knew he didn’t make it, but who had?
“Momma, someone’s been digging in your garden,” he declared with alarm, and quickly added, “and it wasn’t me!”
“Hmmmm,” Momma mildly voiced her displeasure.
“Was it Boxer, the dog next door?” He had been the guilty culprit not a few times.
Jeffy looked at the hole. He remembered the holes that Boxer had dug in the past.
“This hole is smaller than Boxer’s holes,” he said thoughtfully.
“Was it Capricia the cat from down the street?” Momma surmised another fairly frequent guilty party.
“No . . .” Jeffy considered the look of the dirt after Caprica had left her mark. “This is a hole, not a hill,” he said.
“Who do you think dug that hole, then?” she offered him a way to make a good guess.
Jeffy continued to look at the hole as he thought about animals he knew that dug holes.
“It’s too small a hole for a rabbit to live in the winter,” he spoke, absorbed in contemplation. “It’s too big for a worm,” he continued.
“How big is it?” Momma asked, thinking the estimation process would be a good recap of size comparisons they had explored more than once at the kitchen table.
Jeffy used his imagination to see different sized fruits, vegetables, blocks, and balls in his mind. This hole wasn’t shaped like a carrot, so he tossed out vegetable thoughts. It was much smaller than a watermelon, bigger than a pea (oops, that’s a vegetable). A grape? No, this hole was larger than a grape. Smaller than a baseball, maybe a golf ball or a ping pong ball?
Just then a quick movement caught Jeffy’s eye at the other end of the garden. He knew he had to look slowly and carefully so that the animal would not get scared and fly or scamper away. It was a squirrel, with a peanut, and it was digging in Momma’s garden!
“Momma!” He said excitedly, forgetting not to run over to her, “It was a squirrel! I just saw one burying a peanut in your garden!” He was jubilant. He had figured it out. He went over to the new hole and picked up the peanut the squirrel had dropped in its haste to get away safe from this big boy-threat. Jeffy ran back to Momma proudly showing her the peanut. Momma hugged him.
“I’m so proud of you, my smart boy,” she truthfully admitted to herself as well.
This moment I stand
on a promontory . . .
I fill my lungs with breathlessness,
my soul with the awesome,
grandeur of the heavens.
Though my world before me
is only a dark silhouette
and its details indistinguishable,
I go forth
with an explorer's thrill
to meet the unknown future--
aware there will be sloughs,
but expectant
to find also
a promised land.
That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When budding blossoms do splendidly unfold
And make all pink what rightly all is green;
A bird that flits from bloom to bloom--a hungry calf unweaned.
In me thou seest the bright forenoon of day:
Sun in full sight, yet not at apex,
Rises still upward, eager on its way . . .
And present sees few clouds, and they be but specks.
In me thou seest such kindling of a fire
That thinketh itself the darkness to light,
That yearneth for all t'once to be heaped on the pyre,
Though it knoweth t'would smother this fire of small height--
Still, it catches quickly each bestowal of the Master
Who warms to the glow of seeing me burn the brighter.
SpringHaiku
Plump Spring rain drops plop
On rich brown or green earth drop
Yellow daffodils up pop.
Green Limerick
We all like a touch o' the green:
By bank it's a-growin' & flowin' in streams!
Accounts do account,
Amounts do amount,
But then we awake from our dreams.
The earth and life are full of wrinkles. And so what that they are? Wrinkles are beautiful!
From a fairly featureless molten globe, masses of stone coagulated on the surface of our earth, cooled and hardened into rocky mountains that collided as they rode the boiling undercurrents of lower layers. Such is the theory of our world’s beginnings.
Without mountains, rain wouldn’t drizzle or pour, delicate crystals of ice would hardly have a chance to float and fly to us from celestial skies. The cycle of water that gives each life its turn is invigorated by those wrinkled, layered masses pressed up from ordinary plains by processes deep beneath the surface. Streams rush down, re-cycling rocks, bringing new earth and richness to the fields. Those same streams lend their mountain-made energy to man—once to grind the wheat to make the bread, now to churn electric power.
Amid the mountains, hidden streams percolate, gather, concentrate the treasures of earth into ore- and gem-filled cracks and crannies. Mountain vents allow the earth to blow off steam and release built-up forces too hot to handle.
Mountains grow under pressure, quake and tremble at their faults and slips, and bend their backs to support the flora and fauna of forests. They soar above the clouds and change mundane to spectacular sights. They take the grinding burden of glaciers wearing away at them year after year in dignified grace.
Mountains are wrinkles, but oh, what wrinkles!
Life has wrinkles—not just in the sheets and shirts, suits and slacks. Yet there’s no need to become wrinkle wranglers running manglers all the time. Lest we think our lives must be spent in straightening and ironing all to crisp smoothness, let us contemplate a moment why we impress creases in our dress pants and why we crimp and curl hair. Why did searsucker and other purposely wrinkled fabrics come into style? What about “scrunchies”, slouch socks, and the rumpled look? When life is too flat, it’s boring, stifled, uncomfortable.
Maybe not all are attracted to the dogged looks of the Sharpei breed, but a certain looseness is not only a more relaxed fit, it’s critical. Why do elephants have wrinkles? Imagine how elbows and knuckles—even eyelids—would balk at bending if they had no slack in their little folds.
There can be a time for straightness, but there can also be a cherished time of crumpling together in laughter at the wrinkles in and of our times. When life’s pressures and stresses seem to be wearing us away, cracking, breaking us down—eroding even what seemed most solid—it is thus that reveals our hidden layers, bedrock, and treasures from the depths of our souls, far below the superficial.
Wrinkled raisins and walnuts are tasty little jewels we find in cookies, breads, and cinnamon rolls. Wrinkled icing decorates the cake and makes it special. Our senses delight in texture. Without bumps and bends, where would sculpture be? Two dimensions give us meaning and enjoyment, yet how often do we seek and simulate in them the depth of another dimension! We profoundly ponder that other side. We seek to see from many angles, many views. These all come from wrinkles and their cornered kin.
Most beautiful of all are the wrinkles that give character to our countenances. What expressiveness and fun would we lose if we couldn’t crinkle our noses! How much more face has a wrinkled old sage than a babe! Experience has sculpted a masterpiece, to make fertile every field of man’s endeavor. Every life can enrich our own depths and gems of understanding. How many wrinkled old faces radiate hard-won wisdom!
So I say, “Throw out those wrinkle creams!” Why should I be ashamed of my wrinkles and grey hair? I earned them. They express the search and finding of precious things in life. I love to see a wrinkled old face with twinkling eyes, and I don’t shy from attaining my own. Wrinkles are beautiful!
He faces Life
as a force unknown--
his faith in God:
that he's left on his own--
pain and loneliness have taken their toll,
made barren the life, embittered the soul.
I faced Life
as one alone--
though friends had been,
they'd spent each their day, and then passed on--
I asked of Life more than a friend on loan,
longed for a heart to call my home.
He faced me
with the eternal question,
I challenged the course
of his direction,
but the empty room begged me come--
no longer me, no longer he . . . Nous sommes.
No sudden inspirations
come flowing to my mind,
No metaphors, no similes,
No complaints that Love is blind;
No profuse allusions
to Love's delusive nature,
No mention how elusively, confusedly,
It takes one unawares.
Expect no flowery effusions
from Love's elated pen:
When my hand takes that instrument
Romantic utterance ends.
My love for you is simple,
a simple caring that has grown:
I've grown accustomed to your being there
When I need support and love.
I have within
A Martha and a Mary.
Master, wilt Thou judge them fairly--
For the one who serves Thee with her hands,
Begs only Thy help in her weighty tasks,
While the one who listens with all her heart
For wisdom from Thy lips only asks.
Shall she be denied?
Which?
Is Martha to be condemned?
She serves sincerely as listens Mary.
Master, please, do judge her fairy;
I love her dearly as her Friend.
These two sisters within me reside,
Shall I cast either cruelly to the world outside?
Are they not of one Father, one family?
Love they not both their brother, and Thee?
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