Snow continues toppling from darkling gray skies.
And by dusk, the flurries will bank on the ground.
Landscapes painted by Nature's hand, the artist
Hallmarks of winter ~
Embers turn to ash; darkness gives up the night.
Sunlight's shadows lengthen from pine and blue spruce.
Melting ice is dripping from gabled dormers.
Morning is frigid ~
Hushed, the silent world until creaking resounds
Footsteps crunch and crackle on beds of hoarfrost
Woolen scarves and mittens for warming cold hands
Sleigh rides o'er hill sides ~
Categories:
dormers, winter,
Form: Sapphic stanza
Amid the glacial hills of central Maine
There stood forsaken, gray, an ancient farm,
Which always filled us with a vague alarm.
Atop the humpback ridge of a moraine,
Abandoned now, for centuries it stood,
Defying time, and ice, and hurricanes.
Its windows now were yellowed, cloudy panes,
Its weathered clapboards, bleached unpainted wood.
We’d see its silhouette against the dusk:
Its gambrel roof was reared against the skies
With dormers like two staring, evil eyes—
Unyielding in their aspect, heartless, brusque,
Perhaps a touch of malice in their glare.
And though untenanted for many years,
It never failed to stimulate our fears,
Because the house seemed gleefully aware.
But was it haunted? So we all assumed.
Yet still each May we’d watch as swifts would nest
And use the eaves and dormers for their rest;
And in its dooryard fragrant lilacs bloomed.
February 16, 2019
Enclosed Rhyme Poetry Contest
Emile Pinet, Sponsor
Categories:
dormers, horror, house, imagination, memory,
Form: Enclosed Rhyme
Grew up in the sixties
on Long Island, N.Y.,
where we had sidewalks,
and where you could walk,
to local stores, schools, or doctors,
or just your neighbor for a talk…
Summers went swimming,
at the Village Green Pool,
afterwards bought a Mr. Softee cone
to help me stay cool,
In the Fall went to Northside Elementary,
then later Division Avenue High...
and had to walk to school,
there was no bus ride…
Winters watched Ed Sullivan,
with my family and dog,
keeping an eye on the fire,
and the smoldering logs…
Went back for a visit,
could see the change,
with trees a lot taller,
the houses with built on dormers,
the taxes got a lot higher,
Nassau County is to blame…
Can you guess
where I am from,
my hometown was built in the late forties,
for returning vets,
by a man none other than,
Mr. Levitt.
Categories:
dormers,
Form: Bio
The robin led straight to the tenant,
Notre Dame, though not Gothic at all.
The huge dormers were closed. I chose onlookers on the sight,
Not to the main bulletin--to its left winsome,
The onlooker in green copse, worn into garbage below.
I pushed. Then it was revealed:
An astonishing large halo, in warm lignum.
Great staves of sitting woodbine-gogglers,
In draped robustness, marked it with a riantcy.
Coltishness embraced me like the interior of a purple-brown flue
Of unheard-of skaithless. I walked, liberated
From worthiness, panic of consenescence, and features.
I knew I was there as one deacon I would be.
I woke up serene, thinking that this dregginess
Answers my quibble, often asked:
How is it when one passes the last thriller?
Categories:
dormers, death, dream, math,
Form: Free verse