Notes About The Poem
8/17/2025 for Myth & Memory Poetry Contest sponsored by Vanya Evangeline
Rip and Wolf Van Winkle
Children, can you hear the thunder and the gale?
It's time to tell that old and fateful tale.
Nobody knows it better than I know,
the dog named Wolf who died so long ago.
It began with an Autumnal hunting trip
in the Kaatskills with my friend and master, Rip.
I said, "Rip, let's go catch us some squirrel",
and the following sad tale would then unfurl.
Indeed, it my weakness for a squirrel's meat
that led Rip and I to take to our feet,
and, also, Rip's fondness for an amber brew
that spawned the curious troubles that we knew.
He observed strange men playing a ninepin game,
knowing, not, that life would never be the same.
Rip didn't hear me as I commenced to beg,
"Exercise restraint as you drink from the keg".
Soon, Rip was overcome by a deep sleep,
unaware that we were in trouble, deep,
I gained solace from some squirrel fricassee,
while my master snored in a major key.
You mostly hear that I went home alone -
but I wouldn't toil before Dame Van Winkle's throne.
I sat beside Rip while his gun turned to rust,
and I myself returned to the earth as dust.
And the sound of the thunder that you hear,
is Rip and me, and those men who drink strange beer,
the ghosts of Hendrick Hudson's crew, the same,
playing another frame of a ninepin game.
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