Little Boy Blue

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
   But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
   And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
   And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
   Kissed them and put them there.

"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
   "And don't you make any noise!"
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
   He dreamt of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
   Awakened our Little Boy Blue---
Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
   But the little toy friends are true.

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
   Each in the same old place---
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
   The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
   In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
   Since he kissed them and put them there.

                                                             Eugene Field

This sentimental poem was one of my mother's favorites.  You might dismiss it lightly as Victorian dribble except for the fact that, the poem was written in memory of Field's young son who had died at a very early age.

Love Note from the Fishbowl

There  was one time and not so long ago, that you seemed so fascinated by me and my little world. I still don't know why. You would lean close with your face, nearly pressing against the glass and I would glare back at you, staring unblinkingly at your expressive brown eyes. To search for meaning. To attempt to understand what you must be thinking at that moment. So yes, I admit it, I loved you.

The music you played, the rhythm of your footsteps, the snow storm of food you gave, all these became my experiences. You were my life and the only world I have ever known. And I gratefully accepted the life we shared. After all what else did I have beyond you?

I want to say I knew you well but I cannot. For hours I would watch you and try to understand. Try to become more of a part of your world. But subtract all the things I thought I saw and thought I understood about you subtract these from the rest of the world I could never make much sense of and only emptiness remains.

But last night, I called out your name into the blackness. But there was no answer.

So, tell me have you stopped loving me? A simple question to ask, I know. Did you forget my name or am I even real to you at all? Have I become only an ornament in a bubbling piece of furniture? Another thing in your life requiring regular maintenance.

And when I am gone and you are holding my gold satin corpse in the palm of your hand, will it matter much to you? Will my replacement come so easily to you?

Because last night, I looked out to the limits of my myopic view and called your name. I called your name- it is the only word I know- and I sang the song of love for you and I waited. But there was no answer.

BuzzNet Tags: short fiction,Love

Rules of Flight

I wrote this poem years ago. I hope you like it.

 Rules of Flight

 

Consider this.

Consider that

the solution the dinosaurs found

when ice and cold surrounded,

and the demise of their race

was taking place

before their skeptical reptilian eyes

was to school themselves

in the rules of flight

and to retool their parts.

exchanging leather for feather

converting earth-bound bones

to perfect shafts of light

and taking wing upon the

north breeze that blew

They climbed the naked trees

and flew.

To dine on worm

To soar with locust

nesting and nestling

in warmer locales

the focus of still warmer locals.

much to apparent dismay

of parents

and all those that chose to stay.

Leaving behind bitter disciples

that became dust

or sun-bleached frowning fossils.

jmm 1992

BuzzNet Tags: dinosaurs,birds,poems,poetry,humor

Poetry for the Blind

The Color Blue
jmmorgan

Of ten thousand things of azure hue,
I've composed a limited sample,
Being these, the ample purest few,
To derive a new meaning from example.

The general shade of a cloudless sky,
The  darkest overhead
And often said, the loveliest of eyes,
If not green or brown instead.

Bodies of water, when clean, deep in day,
Fire, gas-inspired, without smoke or ash,
Humid summer air, seen from faraway,
And night-time at a lightning flash.

Musicians, for want of a better word,
call the blues, music of depression,
But to consider the skies,
The seas, your eyes, and a flame,
Blue has yet to give me this impression.

                            August 1991

Evolution

This is one of my favorite poems. Click on the link below for further information about the poem and the poet.

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish In the Paleozoic time, And side by side on the ebbing tide We sprawled through the ooze and slime, Or skittered with many a caudal flip Through the depths of the Cambrian fen, My heart was rife with the joy of life, For I loved you even then.

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved And mindless at last we died; And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift We slumbered side by side. The world turned on in the lathe of time, The hot lands heaved amain, Till we caught our breath from the womb of death And crept into light again

We were amphibians, scaled and tailed, And drab as a dead man's hand; We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees Or trailed through the mud and sand. Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet, Writing a language dumb, With never a spark in the empty dark To hint at a life to come.

Yet happy we lived and happy we loved, And happy we died once more; Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold Of a Neocomian shore. The eons came and the eons fled And the sleep that wrapped us fast Was riven away in a newer day And the night of death was past

Then light and swift through the jungle trees We swung in our airy flights, Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms In the hush of the moonless nights; And, oh! what beautiful years were there When our hearts clung each to each; When life was filled and our senses thrilled In the first faint dawn of speech.

Thus life by life and love by love We passed through the cycles strange, And breath by breath and death by death We followed the chain of change. Till there came a time in the law of life When over the nursing sod, The shadows broke and the soul awoke In a strange, dim dream of God.

I was thewed like an Auroch bull And tusked like the great cave bear; And you, my sweet, from head to feet Were gowned in your glorious hair. Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave, When the night fell o'er the plain And the moon hung red o'er the river bed We mumbled the bones of the slain.

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge And shaped it with brutish craft; I broke a shank from the woodland lank And fitted it, head and haft; Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn Where the mammoth came to drink; Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone And slew him upon the brink.

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes, Loud answered our kith and kin; From west to east to the crimson feast The clan came tramping in. O'er joint and gristle and padded bone We fought and clawed and tore, And cheek by jowl with many a growl We talked the marvel o'er.

I carved the fight on a reindeer bone With rude and hairy hand; I pictured his fall on the cavern wall That men might understand. For we lived by blood and the right of might Ere human laws were drawn, And the age of sin did not begin Till our brutal tusks were gone.

And that was a million years ago In a time that no man knows; Yet here tonight in the mellow light We sit at Delmonico's. Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs, Your hair is dark as jet, Your years are few, your life is new, Your soul untried, and yet -

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay And the scarp of the Purbeck flags; We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones And deep in the Coralline crags; Our love is old, our lives are old, And death shall come amain; Should it come today, what man may say We shall not live again?

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds And furnished them wings to fly; He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn, And I know that it shall not die, Though cities have sprung above the graves Where the crook-bone men make war And the oxwain creaks o'er the buried caves Where the mummied mammoths are.

Then as we linger at luncheon here O'er many a dainty dish, Let us drink anew to the time when you Were a tadpole and I was a fish.

- Langdon Smith

http://books.google.com/books?id=wfRjTQy_7ZIC&dq=Evolution+:+A+Fantasy&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=hGo3gDIjt-&sig=7UOkD-c-mo9KTVdXLhBA0Vkf93Y&hl=en&ei=h3C9Sa3II9WD-Abqv4XEBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA22,M1

To an Unknown Construction

From this window,

I can see

(though another building's half-obstructing)

a scruffy team of workmen

amid the cold

with some kind of thing

they are constructing.

I'd like to go out

and ask them

"Say, whatever this supposed to be?

A warehouse, office building

Ottoman castle, or factory?

Explain. It's not so clear

to me."

Insallah, one of them might

step up

with crooked speech

and earnest look

and try his best,

by hook or crook,

to recall the English lessons

he once took.

After all

and everything

I might have heard

I would still not divine

the strain of though

from the train of words.

And they,

(like every Turk I've ever known)

would not be content

to leave my ignorant well-enoughs alone.

January 30, 1991