Where Corn Grows Tall

     ~The farm of my ancestors, now without electricity and owned by an Amish farmer~

*

Clouds hang like a blanket over the mountain as I drive down the road

Back to where my roots run deep, and corn grows nine feet tall

To the valley where my mother and grandmother and her mother were born

Past the farm where I spent my summers working during my teen years

Where cows were milked and hay was baled and stories flowed freely

Today I am driving down the road my parents and grandparents traveled

reflecting on how much has changed and how much is still the same

What has not changed are the fields of green alfalfa and rows of tall corn

Amish buggies with black tops still clip clop down the road in this world 

where time has stopped…  and the world moved on at a faster pace

Memories float through my mind as I drive down the road

letting the Valley envelop me and fill my soul with nostalgia

Photos: Dwight L. Roth

Posting for Open Link night at d’Verse

This week we traveled through Central Pennsylvania visiting friends and family. It was beautiful with cooler weather and breathtaking scenery.

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New Brother Surprise

I once was the baby of the family

Enjoying the attention, a plenty

Until one day mom’s surprise

Became my attention’s demise

When she told me her big tummy was not empty

*

My ten-year-old mind started to question

Why she might make such a suggestion

Until one day

They took her away

Now my new baby brother gets the attention

***

Photo: from the family album

Today at d’Verse, Punam asked us to write a Sibling Poem. I decided to write a couple of limericks about the surprise arrival of my baby brother when I was ten years old. He was the only one born in the hospital. The rest of us were delivered at home. Our family doctor was getting too old to do home deliveries by the time my brother was born.

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Shipwreck

Shipwreck

Old ship bones lie buried and rotten

Reflecting a story that’s long forgotten

Symbol of strength

Pride of the ocean

An ill fate soon to be gotten

Flag blowing from the high mast

White billowing sails

Long days on the wide-open ocean

Casting their fates t’will soon be too late

As the sun goes to sleep without motion

*

Port of call on islands across the Caribbean

With many wild stories to tell

Rum and Sugar and maybe some gold

With pirates hot on their tail

Drinking sweet rum in the late evening sun

Singing songs of women with assets

Dead heads in the morning pounding their skulls

Trying to find a way to get past it

*

Red sky that morning gave an ominous warning

Of danger north of Hatteras

Straight into the gale without any quale

She drove as the storm came at us

If they’d been there before we don’t know for sure

They surely did not remember

Since they rode without fear on this ghost ship of death

Into the ill-fated storm of September

Gargantuan waves crashed over the bow

Drowning out the sailors’ last cry

Cargo and ship sank into the dip

As the cane of September swept by

Pounded and broken the ship in a swoon

Without sailor or cargo or sail

Everything had been cast the ship heaved its last

To lie in its grave in the dunes

For the next hundred years entombed in the sand

It took its rest without moving

Until a cane of October came washing over

Leaving open its coffin for viewing

Now families with children climb high on the dunes

Assuming but never knowing

Ships’ bones tell no tales

That’s left to me

And my imagination’s still growing

Today for open link night at d’Verse, I am revisiting one of my favorite poems from the past. One of my very favorite poems is the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Although I don’t begin to think this is anywhere close to that, it does give that ominous feeling of fate doing its thing with the sailors on the sea.

The moon painting of the Ship’s Bones is from a B&W picture I took years ago at the public beach jut below Nags Head, NC. A skeleton of an old ship was lying there trapped in the sand dunes.

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Wounded Beauty

I saw this beauty, as I was eating my dinner, having its dinner on my butterfly bush. Drawn by the nectar of the purple blossoms it went from flower to flower posing for me to get my shots. Somewhere along the way it appears a bird took a chunk out of its tail. It did not seem to affect the Yellow Swallowtail at all.

Wounded beauty flits

Drinking deeply from flowers

Nature’s fine wine

Sporting Double-Gs (humorous)

He wasn’t a dancing Queen with high heels and make-up

rather a big and full-figured guy // but unlike Dolly Parton’s shake-up

*

He loved a bottle of beer at the bar…  first one and then another

It made him swell around the waste till his belt he could hardly tether

*

Bald and shiny was his head, he stood only five-foot three

He wasn’t sporting Double-Ds…     nor even Double-Es

*

He had what I would call Double-Gs // floating around his waist

His rolls poked out all over the place // clearly lacking taste

*

Spilling all across his middle like a giant jiggly table

When he looked down to see his feet, he found he wasn’t able

*

His cleavage, not in the center of his chest // it went another direction

Instead of up and down // it took a different orientation

*

Divided by his leather belt he split them right in two

Typical of middle-aged men,,, perhaps like me and you

*

Double-Gs // the perfect name for this unusually Big Gut

Not a pleasant site to see so we keep our eyes wide shut

Photo: Dwight L, Roth

Today at d’Verse, Grace gave us the prompt of Bottle and what’s in it. I decided to take a humorous route and poke some fun at myself. I hope it is not offensive to anyone. I was talking with my wife today about a talk show host who was quite buxom, and how heavy they would be to have to deal with each day. I started comparing it to the weight of carrying around the extra twenty pounds I lost. She said your stomach would be a Double G for big gut! So out of that came this poem. Although, I am not a beer drinker!

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Pine Needles Dancing

Pine needles’ glow reflects the October sunshine

Waltzing to the rhythm of a soft afternoon breeze

Old needles shedding // retaining the new

Through long winter’s cold and intense summer’s heat

Always radiant with hope for the future

Knowning the loss will always be replaced

Photo: Dwight L. Roth

Today at d’Verse De gave us the Quadrille prompt Pine.

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Nature’s Surprise (a Haiku)

Nature is always full of surprises. We had lunch today with my son and his family. On the way out to our car, we saw this unusual giant bug on the curb. My middle school Grandson recognized it as a Goliath Beetle. We soon realized that it was no longer alive, so we did some photo shots with our phones. My granddaughter took a couple of shots of me holding it. Being in really good condition, I brought this beautiful specimen home to keep.

Goliath Beetle

Killed by the hot summer sun

No smooth stones needed

Photos: Dwight L. Roth & Molly Roth

Black is Beautiful (a haiku)

This Black Swallowtail was enjoying my Zinnias this morning. He did not seem to mind the heat as the sweat dripped off of me while shooting these photos.  I could not resist sharing this beautiful creature with you, even though I have shared my butterflies in earlier posts. I hope you enjoy my beautiful fragile friend.

Art Deco design

Nature’s beautiful creature

Black is beautiful

Photos: Dwight L. Roth

Nikon D200

Lost in Transition

Lost in Transition

How does one transition from reality to faded memories

from a sharp intuitive mind to one lost in space?

When loved ones fade away, losing their grasp on life,

it seems so cruel to watch them lose touch

as memories dim like dying batteries in a flashlight.

What must it feel like to know that little by little your mind

is shrinking like a mushroom in the hot afternoon sun?

The agony of no longer knowing your friends

your family…. even your spouse

must be unbearable as one grasps for a name to go with a face.

As mind’s darkness closes in, the transition into denial and loneliness

clouds the eyes and numb memory shuts down…

but the body goes on living.

We say, “It really is good that he does not know at this point.”

But does he?       And… is it?

***

Today at d’Verse, Merril gave us the prompt, Transition. There are many ways to go with this one, but I chose to reflect again on the way Alzheimer’s affects so many people as they age. So many questions and few answers. My father-in-law pictured above went through several transitions as his Alzheimer’s progressed. It was very sad to see. Early on he asked questions, but as time went on he became more resigned to his plight.

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Rush Hour

 

It was one of those Fridays when the rush of life reminded me how many there are living in this world, all packed together in cities large and small.

I hurried out of the office to fifth level of the parking garage to find my Miata MX5. Winding down the ramp I thought of how Julie might react when I proposed to her over dinner. Absentmindedly I clutched the small felt box in my pocket for reassurance.

Entering the beltway, I zoomed in with the merging traffic. By the time I got to the second exit things were slowing down like traffic holding its breath. Sky, a tense diaphragm, was descending rapidly with dark clouds of rain.

Looking in my rearview mirror, I could see an eighteen-wheeler coming up very fast behind me. I reached for my phone and dialed Julie’s number.

                                                 ***

Today at d’Verse, Kim gave us a prosery prompt, a line from a poem by Seamus Heany called “Twice Shy.” The line is: traffic holding its breath, Sky, a tense diaphragm.  It must be no more that 144 words. Mine is flash fiction.

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Photo: Dwight L. Roth