Long Ohio Poems
Long Ohio Poems. Below are the most popular long Ohio by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Ohio poems by poem length and keyword.
It’s called ENCHANT…the world’s largest holiday light event experience…with a 100 foot tall Christmas tree…Since it was in St. Pete we decided this is one light show we have to see.
As we entered we were greeted by a truly wondrous sight…
immediately surrounded by music and completely immersed in lights.
Santa, his reindeer, and Mrs. Claus were there to add to the joy we were feeling…
A constantly changing rainbow of lights was everywhere we looked…there were even blue whales hanging from the ceiling.
But what made this evening special to us…enhancing its already wondrous charm…
was when he happened upon a young mother and father with their newborn in their arms.
Their smiles were enough to illuminate the stadium…they didn’t need 4 million lights.
Their baby, only one month old, was swaddled in an outfit of red and white.
I was born and raised in the Catholic religion…in Ohio…close to the Bible Belt…
so my first thought was to wonder if they were feeling what Joseph and Mary felt.
We paused a while to talk with them…then calling on the vast experiences we’ve amassed…Deborah advised them to enjoy every moment with their son…because he will grow up so fast.
As the two of us silently left the light show…together…hand in hand…
I smiled knowing the wisdom she shared with that young couple…they will one day understand.
There will come a day the two of them…like the two of us…with children now fully grown…
will, perhaps, be attending the largest holiday light experience…together…on their own.
It is a fine line we walk as parents…wanting our children to develop…praying they will grow…but every now and then wishing time would stop…or at least…for a moment…slow.
Which reminds me of when an old couple was asked…
What’s the happiest part of raising a family…this was their reply…
The happiest part of raising a family is watching them grow up and change as time goes by….
And when asked what’s the saddest part of raising a family…
They smiled and just as quickly exclaimed…
The saddest part of raising a family…
Why our answer is the same.
Cherokee warrior i am
First son of the chief
Named, Bright Cloud
After my ancestors belief
Bride i must choose
For my sons to be born
Ceremonial dress
Tee-pee adorned
My gift to my wife
A beast so grand
Lipizzaner so white
Standing 15 hands
On the day of our wedding
Ohio River so blue
Our ancestors above
Look down on us, two
Warriors and families
Surround our souls
As we are joined together
Like a mare and her foal
Ceremony ends
To our Tee-pee we go
Ancestral chants
In the background slows
Through the night as we dream
As our spirits flow
As we wake in the morning
Our life starts to grow
Years pass
For this Deer and her Cloud
Three sons she has bore
Standing tall and so proud
http://www.thehighlanderspoems.com/native-americans.php
There are these small grassy islands
in-between the sectional lots of cars;
you would presume that nesting geese
would select these spaces
above all other less green choices,
but in the mall parking area
where acres of concrete march
toward distant outlets,
the geese have shunned greenery,
as if soft earth and sheltering stems
were just too rustic.
The birds have created synthetic havens,
woven from strips of Styrofoam, plastic bags,
cardboard fragments, straws, paper cups
and other debris plucked
from the strategically sparse
and overflowing trash bins.
I don’t know if being Canadian, the geese
eschew anything that smells of
wild prairies, or snowy hills,
preferring, like tourists, to construct
their nests to be more like un-valeted motel rooms
after a boozy party.
They sit there taking turns
to face the exhaust fumes,
the rumbling squeal of broken cartwheels,
crying kids being dragged into minivans;
all the chaos of a tribal shopping dance.
They seem content to mix it
with these Ohio natives
with their discarded urban detritus.
Maybe they feel like rich vacationers
in a less fortunate, impoverished land,
I guess after all,
they just want to blend in.
Inspired by the many true crime documentaries I have watched
and in memory of Judy Malinowski, whose death set in motion
a law in Ohio called Judy’s Law, to increase punishment to those
who use accelerants leading to disfigurement in felonies.
He started out gas-lighting her -
the wicked man who loved no one
except himself. He thought he was
number one– that narcissistic sun.
He also isolated her.
To no one could she ever run
except to him – that self-important
filthy scum – a narcissistic sun.
Her sister said, “No more. No more”
and helped her see that she
was not to blame for anything.
From that brute she had to flee.
It wasn’t easy. There were kids,
but when he blackened both her eyes
and bloodied her, she knew at last
she had to cut with him all ties.
She got an order of protection,
yet she lived in constant fear.
He stalked her, and she couldn’t even
know whenever he was near.
She was his prey, his possession.
To see his ex-wife having fun
he could not tolerate because
he was a tyrant narcissistic sun.
One day he followed her to work.
She did not have a clue
when she stopped to fill her gas tank
of what he had planned to do.
Gasoline he doused her with.
What pain and terror she was forced to feel!
That narcissistic sun, so hot with rage,
ended up gas-lighting her for real.
I grew up in Ohio but have spent most of my life in Florida
where I am now 73 years old…
and having just spent the winter in North Carolina I have a theory:
We age differently in the cold.
When it comes to winter in the mountains I can put all vestiges of age on hold
because here my 73 years of age…is concealed by the cold.
Take the fact that as I’ve aged my ears have continue growing…
and I have much less hair than I did the day I wed…
but in the winter in the mountains…all those flaws are covered
by the stocking caps or hoods upon my head.
After 73 years…my face…by wrinkles have been attacked
but in the winter in the mountains…they disappear…
the snow fills in the cracks.
At 73 when I get up or move my bones might pop or creak…with every step I take.
but in the winter in the mountains the crunch of the snow beneath my feet
muffles any noises my bones will tend to make.
At 73 I have a tendency to trip…I’m no longer that young, spry, agile sprinter…
but slipping and sliding on the snow…why that’s just part of winter.
In conclusion…this is not scientific…just an observation from a 73 year old
This is the main reason I believe we age differently in the cold:
In winter…in the snow and cold… I feel less like an old geezer
and more like a sirloin steak that’s been stored inside the freezer…
The cold temperatures help to stop the aging process..
and when I’m thawed out as the warmth of spring returns…
the only sign I’ve aged at all…is a little freezer burn…
If my theory is correct…as each year I grow older and turn another page
a little winter freezer burn is a small price to pay
to knock a few months off my age.
Here in my suburban acre of Ohio;
I feel the generations,
the hungarians, the irish and germans,
the dutch, the blacks, the shawnee.
We are not a melting pot,
we are birds and critters brought here
by wild, wild winds.
I am a grackle
with my own grackle language,
I expect you who live in the same tree with me
have your own way
of making a home in this land.
Heartland is the root we share,
The root is lazy days in PJ’s.
Hectic mini-van school runs,
sweats for Walmart and yelling at stuff.
One dress tie for special occasions.
Most of us are not poor or rich,
Most of us about nothing much.
We don’t love our guns,
we simply keep them
in case those who don’t understand
want to mess with what we’ve earned.
My neighbor is a mourning dove,
Her son is a possum that loves to play
video games from dawn to dusk.
My pal is a rooster, a gnarly-handed poet,
don’t ask him to write anything
he might think those fighting words.
I like being a grackle, but I married an anhinga
from Florida.
She is adjusting.
Many years after leaving London
I return to the city
it is still dreaming of better days.
I am burdened with landscaped memories,
recordings taken with out-of-date electronics;
one is a Betamax video player,
the other by a VHS machine, next a DVD
that has no space for recollections.
An elderly Vauxhall Astra follows me
like an ever faithful dog.
The metropolis
is built on the brick-dust of era’s,
The young look dazed,
as if worm-holes in the River Thames
had closed
leaving them stranded here.
I imagine that nightly,
an older populace hang upside-down
from bell-tower rafters
to dream of Imperial Lions.
I have recorded the trip
on that clunky Betamax;
only I have the arcane skills
to operate it.
Back in Ohio
I store London in its original box,
then make my way downstairs
to photograph my wife
with a once brand new
polaroid camera.
She’d kept the pewter dusted and displayed
since 1959.
A verdigris had leached out of the urn nevertheless
She had been hard on him, had forgiven little,
but felt much closer now.
The television became a corner coffin,
its screen a penumbra she often spoke to.
She had interred it in 1974 after Nixon left office
“Disgraceful.” She had said both to his ashes, and the set.
A part of her husband remained to dwell with her;
the homunculus felt like a much-chewed jaw-bone
rattling in the urn.
She began to dream.
His tweed suit walked from its closest,
to make love to her,
sleeves caressed sensitive pockets.
When she awoke she smelled of mothballs,
Brylcreem and Old Spice.
The television came to life;
the blue monochrome face of Nixon appearing -
he was crying.
his permanent five o’clock shadow damp with tears.
“Sorry Mabel.” He said.
“You should be.” She retorted hotly,
yet her heart skipped a beat as the screen died.
She was troubled.
She broke the glass front of the TV
placing her husband's urn inside.
The urn grew greener as if it were full of Ohio River water.
She saw herself as a young girl swimming;
the river as refreshing as a lime phosphate.
The urn glimmered as new images surfaced,
a tenderness gnawed at her.
Her late spouse teased her with fingers
plucked from her own lap.
He brushed her lips with threads of gray.
Her bitterness
become a speck she kept in a jar of Pond’s facial cream.
“Just in case,” she thought.
I’ve lived here my whole life.
I work here.
Wearing slippers to work.
So fuzzy and nice.
My manager is tearing through.
Every word is nothing.
Grappling at every pause.
This room is dizzy.
Computer keyboards.
Pens and pencils.
Typing for hours.
And nothing goes my way.
Printing out blank sheets of paper.
Lunch.
Open a lunchbox.
I packed five slices of bread and a spoon.
Tiredness.
I think I left the lamp on at home.
So I drove to some town in Ohio.
A new life attached to me.
Two hours ago, I lived in Michigan my whole life.
And I was tired.
Now I’m totally awake.
My eyes are biting everything.
Everything burns.
Ohio is where you go.
On a little lunch break.
Everything is whimsical.
When you think you’ve lived in Ohio.
And no one believes you.
A scrap of ore breaks surface.
The metallic pebble is already colonized
by moss and fungi factories,
in a millennia rocks will churn
a green spawn into small rural towns.
Fields of new growth
must be planted in microscopic slime.
The Shawnee come and go,
as fireflies on a summer night they pass,
raw boned settlers,
add their calcium to the earth.
Small time-seeded towns sprout.
Hands work wood, stone, then brick.
More foundational pebbles are unearthed
Tornadoes clear the land, reconstructed
malls ride the roads.
Antique stores blossom in the dust.
Art galleries and cake shops
vie for customers, donuts triumph.
Arts and crafts stores signal the end
of old railway lines.
Cities of iron and coal bud and blight.
The moss returns and flourishes.