Monthly Archives: January 2015

Not So Curious The Snowbird

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not so curious the snowbird
flying off to warmer climes
when harsher winter weather hits
to leave the ice and chill behind

so it seems a sound migration
something I might find appealing, this
to leave my frozen tundra
and that cold that I’ve been dealing with

and of course the warmer summer months
can be ablaze with scorching heat
and stifling humidity
the trip up north would spell relief

‘tis a wonder, chasing weather
so to be outside all day
it’s a luxury of modern times
it’s not your standard get away

so harken now to basal times
with geese and wrens and robins
remove thyself from winter’s frost
it’s freezing soon forgotten

Pelicans

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I had never seen a pelican formation

I thought them solitary, each to each

but there they were – eleven birds

slowly wafting down the beach

A leisurely diagonal which angled back

against the shoreline, biding time

one would flap a single stroke

then each one, too, in successive line

and drift along to be wherever

they were going, gently flowing

seemingly so unaware of seashell seekers

splashing swimmers or what was going on below

A team of sorts with no concern

of all the goings on and such

attentive toward their own accord

but as toward us, well, not so much

The Sad Song of Karelia

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The Winter War was brutal
and with carnage cold, pervasive
hardened further these
of Nordic blood and steely grit

Not pushed easily these Finns
no matter how coercive
seemed the Soviet machine
positioned to absorb this vast extent

With death and dying everywhere
of peevish neighbors now invasive
no time here for sadness as the
sense of urgency could not relent

These homicidal fields were littered
time and again so undeserved
the tens of thousands perished
cruel usurper, evil spirit

Alas, a bitter quid pro quo
its freedom proved persuasive
thus the isthmus lies; is
lost to further argument

The Decembrist Wives

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These were not common, these camp followers
these devoted few women of those sparse survivors
sanctioned so to live or so as cold Sibir awaited
them and theirs to harshest toil and
they themselves impoverished aristocracy

among them none of those five hung – and three hanged twice –
for wanting just to see the end of serfdom’s slavery
made for them the hope of somehow being
in the farthest east Yakutsk or yet perhaps Nerchinsk

the rough and crude, abusive solitude
this callous rule, this cruel administration,
ruthless, tsarist exile could not cause to waver
yea, could not unhinge their fealty

these dedicated brides of brave but doomed men
tho’ sickness and starvation caused to perish those
who could not make it through the bitter winters
these were women of steadfastness, loyalty and ardor

local folk, admirers of the ones who would not swear,
assisted as these women swept their mud floor huts and wept
their husbands hushed and placed in chains in mines
the utter desolation kept at bay by dint of love’s hard labor

no, these were not common, these camp followers
these devoted few women of those sparse survivors
sanctioned so to live or so as cold Sibir awaited