In a southern Michigan soybean field, a farmer found a bent fence post, caked with mud. Which was no big deal, until he discovered it was actually part of a fifteen thousand year old pelvis of a Wooly Mammoth.
Wooly Mammoths, which are extinct, seem rather exotic for southern Michigan. Though the news accounts carried no suggestion that the farmer felt annoyed by this unexpected find, it had to be a pain in the butt to halt daily agricultural operations to bring in the archaeologists.
But Trail Baboon’s singsong poet laureate, Schuyler Tyler Wyler, became quite excited when I told him about this story, because he considers the Wooly Mammoth to be his totem animal.
Both STW and Wooly Mammoths are large, hairy, under-appreciated creatures whose unexpected appearance can sometimes lead to feelings of disappointment that the discoverer has not found a real elephant, or a serious poet.
STW’s latest work speaks of this in the hirsute behemoth’s lilting voice.
A farmer works for higher yields,
to see his family’s bread won.
But gets my carcass in his fields!
A crop! Alas, a dead one.
My bones are no commodity
to trade on the exchange,
An old organic oddity.
low-salt, no cage, free-range.
To dig me up is more than play.
I’m ingrained in the ground.
Though true, I’m trespassing today,
‘Twas not when I fell down.
So now they’ve dug up my remains,
and inventoried fully:
Acres of soybeans, tons of grains.
One ancient Mammoth, wooly.
But I’ll make no apology
to that exhausted farmer.
His harvest – part mythology,
part prehistoric charmer!
Ever find a surprise in the dirt?
nice to see you back swt. i have not ever found a thing in the dirt. i thought for a while about being a anthropologist. what a cool job description.
i feel a littel sorry for the next wowner of the house where we are leaving. in the center island of the driveway we have 2 dog burial grounds i guess thats part of the reason people pay for graveyards. when they relandscape they may find artifacts they didnt expect. lckily the heads of dogs are not going to have the homicide partol brought in.
is there an nimal creation service avilable? hmmmmm
friday morning idea to mull for the weekend.
LikeLike
When we bought our house it was winter and the back yard looked like it had a lovely garden (hard to tell for sure under the snow). Garden was hardly the selling point, but it seemed a plus. Imagine our surprise come spring when we found that what we had was mostly weeds, some white violets, an overgrown hydrangea and more weeds. Over a few of the following summers, I tried to start clearing the mess. It turned out to not be as easy as pulling weeds, There were layers and layers of landscaping cloth and plastic and partially decomposed weeds and mulch between the layers and…oy. No treasure. Just more landscaping lasagna. We gave up in a few spots. The worst stretch now houses the climber I built for Miss S…
LikeLiked by 1 person
P.S. Somehow I had pictured STW as long and overly skinny and a bit pasty…not mammoth-like and hairy. Ah well. A little like seeing some of the voices you hear on the radio for the first time – not a disappointment, just not what was in your head.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And yet, Anna, you sometimes see the face behind the voice and the person turns out to be utterly delightful. Think Dale Connelly!
LikeLiked by 4 people
I never said that each and everyone wasn’t delightful – just sometimes not what my imagination had conjured. Dale was actually pretty close. Peter Sagal was a surprise…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m not sure who it was you met, Steve. In my heyday I had several doubles – actors out working the streets with an assignment to be places the guy in the radio would be. Several were complete jerks, but at least one of them was, indeed, “utterly delightful.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
About the only thing I’ve dug up for myself have been roots and rocks, along with a few carrots. However, when I was in grade school they redid the playground and filled in around the structures with pebbles. Being the strange child I was, I sifted through the pebbles for interesting stones, and found bits of what I thought was fossilized vertebrae. I’ve learned since that they were segments of sea lilies. Fortunately I was in the middle grades by that time and had learned to keep my mouth shut. My teachers were of the “Fossils were placed in the earth to test our faith” school of Young Earth Creationism, and my burbling about them would likely have gotten me one of those special lectures.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Oh, dear!
LikeLike
Rise and Escavate Baboons!
When we moved to our house we found a supply of Action Figures in the yard. While gardening, we still dig them up nearly 20 years later. The archeological evidence points to a 9 year old boy in the vicinity. And we verified this!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Morning all. Hmmm… off the top of my head, can’t think of a thing. But I’ll keep thinking….
LikeLike
Morning–
I read about this Michigan farmer with interest. Wouldn’t it be fun to dig up something like that??
Course, it also messes up your schedule for awhile… not to mention making a mess of the actual field. Better not plan on using those acres for a while.
I’ve dug up lots of things. Nothing very exciting or valuable. Lots of bent nails and rusty bits of something-or-other.
Dug up lost hitch pins, grease guns, rocks (lots of rocks) and yet have never found the old potato digger Dad said was left back in the corner of some field. Haven’t found the can of money my uncle buried back in the 30’s or 40’s.
My dad found an arrow head when he was a kid.
Neighbors have a picture of a horse shoe stuck into the point off their 40′ digger; collision of worlds there.
I’ve found lots of small fossils as we have mostly limestone under our farm. So lots of those snail looking things.
Let me think about this. See if I can remember digging up anything more exciting than that.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Greetings! Well, we had somewhat of a surprise. We bought a plot in the Community Garden in Big Lake again this year. Right after we planted seeds, there was a big rain that apparently washed away my carrots, beets, chard, lettuce, etc. About the only thing that grew were rutabagas which, apparently, Jim planted the whole darn package.
So we harvested about 100 rutabagas and I spent a day peeling, cutting and blanching them, and vacuum packing in big plastic FoodSaver bags in freezer. Now I don’t know what to do with them!
The only surprise was these big sunflowers that grow around the community garden, which Jim LOVES. He collects the sunflower seeds and plays Johnny Appleseed by dispersing sunflower seeds everywhere. The man’s a menace …
LikeLiked by 3 people
He should read the picture book Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. She scattered lupine seeds.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Lupines are a wonderous flower. I get a crop going every few years. Sigh.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, I’ve got a few out front that have finally caught. They’re amazing to look at the detail…
LikeLiked by 1 person
boil and mash them with regular potatoes….very tasty. One of our nearby churches does that for their annual meatball & potato sausage dinner. Best church supper in the county!
LikeLiked by 2 people
My grandmother and mother also do the rutabaga/potato mix. Was a favorite of my grandfather’s. I haven’t gotten the next generation on board with it (yet).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Classic Scottish Tatties and Neeps.
LikeLiked by 3 people
A few old coins, like a buffalo head nickel and a 1915 Mercury head dime. And then there’s the old claw foot bathtub we found when digging out in the back 40.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It gets curiouser and curiiouser…
LikeLike
But no St. Joseph statue burried upside down?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I keep expecting something like that.
LikeLike
We are located quite close the the Hells Creek Formation, famous for fossils. People here find lots of dinosauer artifacts, along with arrow heads.
We buried our first terrier out in the country on a friend’s farm, and our first cat along the side of the house. The ashes of the other two cats are in urns in the back yard. We will have to see if we would take them with us if we ever moved.
I still hold out hope that soup spoons will appear if we ever dig up the lilac hedge in the back yard, as children were known to take snacks and hide under the branches and eat. I think I mentioned before about the Wedgewood cereal bowls we found buried under several inches of spruce needles when we trimmed the bottom 6 feet of branches off the spruce trees. The bowls had been there for 10 years, left there by daughter and best friend when they filled the bowls with mints at son’s high school graduation reception. The girls had taken refuge under the spruce trees to gorge themselves with candy. The bowls were in “mint” condition (sorry for the bad pun) and we use them today.
LikeLiked by 5 people
The girls were 9 and 10 years old at the time, old enough to know that they should have brought the bowls back in the house and to not leave them under the trees. They were a couple of flibbertygibbet fly-by-nights, those two. They still are.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Shocking language, this!!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh Renee!
LikeLike
Just some old bones but that was hardly a surprise given having dogs in the yard.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That must have been one gigantic dog to have buried the mammoth.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It is so cool to think that Mammoths lived in Michigan! That must have been a really interesting find.
LikeLiked by 2 people
We had tricerotops out her in western ND, eastern MT
LikeLiked by 2 people
I have goats, dogs, cats and horses buried in various places around the farm…next folks will have quite a collection of bones if they start digging. (Horses are safely 12 feet or more deep, but never know what the frost will bring to the surface).
I am enjoying reports of Viking swords, rings and things being discovered in Scandinavia and Great Britain. Just watched a youtube of Michael Wood describing a woman who decided the mound in her back yard should be excavated… and there they found early Anglo Saxon treasures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo
I often wonder what the future folks with think of our artifacts…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Every time I bag the dog poo and toss it away, I wonder how the future folks will interpret the millions of bags of petrified dog poop with traces of plastic….
LikeLiked by 3 people
It will really be confusing if the dogs had been eating crayons.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Just another reason NOT to wish to be a future archaeologist.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Reminds me of a story about my mom. She and my aunt had taken a cruise and it stopped somewhere in Mexico for the passengers to hike. My mom kept finding these wonderful seeds in clumps that she wanted to plant at home so she stuff them in her cigarette case. The blooming purple plant would look wonderful in our yard. Upon arrival at customs, they were going through her stuff.
“M`am why do you have a cigarette case full of goat poo?”
LikeLiked by 1 person
My mother tended to not tell the truth; she’d “embroider” on the facts of reality to make it more palatable. While I was off at boarding school, my pet turtle,Sofus, disappeared. Mom claimed that my sister’s dog had flipped him upside down, and that she hadn’t discovered it until it was too late. When I asked where Sofus was buried, she showed me a place under my bedroom window. At the time, I bought her explanation.
It is one of those “facts” of my childhood that I’ve never made peace with. I have often wondered whether I would find Sofus’ shell there if I asked the current owners permission to dig there. Why do parents lie to their children?
LikeLiked by 1 person
When I was about 5, my father told me that a pug we had, Bingo , who refused to be house trained, accidently jumped on a truck full of watermelons driven by some people from Arkansas who had parked their truck at his gas station, and had been taken to Arkansas. There really was a watermelon truck at his station at the time. He told me wonderful stories about a pug’s life in Arkansas. Who knows the true story?
LikeLiked by 4 people
I suppose, Renee, that most parents tell what they think are innocent lies. In my case, I know that my mother’s tendency to make up things – pure fiction, if you will – it has really made me question just about everything that I know about her. Because so many of her stories did not need embellishment of any sort, I have a hard time figuring out why she felt the need to do it, and a hard time determining what is fact and what is fiction.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t mean to be disloyal to my mother, not at all. Just wish I had a better understanding of what motivated her to be such an elaborate storyteller.
On some level, I think I understand. She came from such squalor that no amount of accomplishment was ever going to be enough to compensate for it. She’s been dead now for twenty-three years, and I appreciate more than ever what a fighter she was, but I’ll be damned, I still can’t figure out the mystery that was my mother.
LikeLike
If she didn’t witness the dog flipping the turtle, how did she know it was the dog that did it?
LikeLike
I can’t speak to what motivated your mother to tell stories, PJ. Of course, I didn’t know her. What I have seen in other people is that most of us are comfortable telling “white lies” that we believe will be kinder than the truth. What we don’t see is that the calculation of what will be kinder than the truth often has its roots in what will be kinder to us. That is, when we lie we excuse it by saying this story is better for the person we lie to, better than the unadorned truth. Actually, the lie is a version of the event that we find more comfortable. And to be fair, that can be a tricky distinction to keep in mind.
LikeLike
Perhaps Bingo was trying to figure out why we were trucking watermelons to Arkansas. That seems suspicious. Bingo: Private Eye?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Having spent a lot of time digging in the dirt, I should have some good stories about surprising finds, but I don’t.
Maybe that’s a good thing. You don’t want the surprise to be a severed hose from an underground sprinkler system, or a utility line.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Excellent.
LikeLike
A private theory I hold is that many–maybe even most–people powerful but irrational phobias. Sensing they are irrational, we hide them. In my case I have a silly but robust phobia about breaking brittle objects (crystal tchotchkes, plates, delicate wine glasses, etc).
Because of all the secret places I poked into while hunting and fishing, I have harbored a secret dread of being the person who discovered a corpse in some weedy or wet places where normal people do not go. That dread may be one reason I’ve not dug in the dirt much. It is far easier for me to imagine uncovering something awful than something splendid.
LikeLiked by 2 people
A Deep Thought by Jack Handy
“When I found the skull in the woods, the first thing I did was call
the police. But then I got curious about it. I picked it up, and
started wondering who this person was, and why he had deer horns.”
LikeLiked by 7 people
“I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don’t have any clean laundry because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life?” Jack Handy
LikeLiked by 3 people
Snort!
LikeLike
Let’s spend the rest of the weekend uncovering deep thoughts or quotes by… people. Jack Handy is such a role model!
LikeLike
“There is not such thing as a failure who keeps trying.” (Anon.?)
LikeLike
…no such thing…
LikeLike
My favorite source for thoughtful quotes is The Sun magazine.
Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world’s worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a bad hangover and pms come to stay with you.
Anne Lamott
Now, to balance the negative view of children:
The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that — a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.
Debra Ginsberg
LikeLiked by 2 people
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
– Clifton Fadiman
LikeLiked by 3 people
“Maybe in order to understand mankind we have to look at that word
itself. MANKIND. Basically, it’s made up of two separate words
“mank” and “ind.” What do these words mean? It’s a mystery and
that’s why so is mankind.” Jack Handy
LikeLiked by 5 people
Here are a few I collected in college, and have no idea where they came from:
No matter where you go, there you are.
In a hundred years, none of this will matter.
If you want to live forever, you’ve missed the point.
and then this by Ronnie Shakes:
I like life. It’s something to do.
LikeLiked by 4 people
No matter where you go, there you are.
Something similar:
Why are we here? Because we’re not there.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I don’t why, perhaps the topic of digging in the back yard and then the shift to thoughtful quotes and that I have chosen this poem to read aloud at our December book club meeting…but. one of my all-time favorite poems and poets:
Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out!
She’d scour the pots and scrape the pans,
Candy the yams and spice the hams,
And though her daddy would scream and shout,
She simply would not take the garbage out.
And so it piled up to the ceilings:
Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
Brown bananas, rotten peas,
Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
It filled the can, it covered the floor,
It cracked the window and blocked the door
With bacon rinds and chicken bones,
Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,
Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans and tangerines,
Crusts of black burned buttered toast,
Gristly bits of beefy roasts. . .
The garbage rolled on down the hall,
It raised the roof, it broke the wall. . .
Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
Globs of gooey bubble gum,
Cellophane from green baloney,
Rubbery blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk and crusts of pie,
Moldy melons, dried-up mustard,
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold french fried and rancid meat,
Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.
At last the garbage reached so high
That it finally touched the sky.
And all the neighbors moved away,
And none of her friends would come to play.
And finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said,
“OK, I’ll take the garbage out!”
But then, of course, it was too late. . .
The garbage reached across the state,
From New York to the Golden Gate.
And there, in the garbage she did hate,
Poor Sarah met an awful fate,
That I cannot now relate
Because the hour is much too late.
But children, remember Sarah Stout
And always take the garbage out!
Shel Silverstein, 1974
Anyone else remember when Garrison played a musical version of this when he did the Morning Show?
LikeLiked by 1 person
(In a day late to get into this conversation…)
LikeLike
I was thinking that Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout could have made some fine compost with some of those ingredients.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Most of them and the rest could go to a dog….who might bury them rather than eat them.
LikeLike
In which case you have some fine compost there.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m intrigued by “I have chosen this poem to read aloud at our December book club meeting”. Sounds like fun – is this something you do regularly at your book club?
LikeLike
We did it year before last at our December meeting. Last year we read Truman Capote’s Christmas Story aloud. This year we opted back to a poem (or two) of our choice. I love it…once was in a “reader’s theater” club where we read aloud to each other.
LikeLiked by 2 people
More interesting, I think, to commit a poem to memory and recite it. I have known people who had numerous poems at their command and I have always been impressed and envious
LikeLiked by 2 people
I think I can do two from memory. Both short ones. I aspire to adding more.
LikeLiked by 1 person
People used to have many poems at their command. I think memorizing a poem gives you a different relationship to it than merely reading it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Poetry changed when technology gave us audio recording. Most of us know many, many songs by heart that really qualify as poetry. In the modern world they’re sung rather than published in a book.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe, but I can only think about one or two lyrics that would stand alone as poetry…
LikeLike
Early one morning I walked out alone,
I looked down the street; no one was around.
The sun was just comin’ up over my home,
On Hickory Street in a little farm town.
The plow broke the prairie, the prairie gave plenty,
The little towns blossomed and soon there were many.
Scattered like fireflies across the dark night,
And one was called Early, and they sure named it right.
Many dry summers parched all the fields,
They burnt the fine colors and cut down the yields.
But the rain has returned to wash away our tears,
It’s the fullest green summer that we’ve seen in years.
Oooo-ee, ain’t the mornin’ light pretty,
When the dew is still heavy, so bright and early.
My home on the range; it’s a one-horse town,
And it’s alright with me.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ten miles down Reedy River
A pool of water lies,
And all the year it mirrors
The changes in the skies,
And in that pool’s broad bosom
Is room for all the stars;
Its bed of sand has drifted
O’er countless rocky bars.
Around the lower edges
There waves a bed of reeds,
Where water rats are hidden
And where the wild duck breeds;
And grassy slopes rise gently
To ridges long and low,
Where groves of wattle flourish
And native bluebells grow.
Beneath the granite ridges
The eye may just discern
Where Rocky Creek emerges
From deep green banks of fern;
And standing tall between them,
The grassy she-oaks cool
The hard, blue-tinted waters
Before they reach the pool.
Ten miles down Reedy River
One Sunday afternoon,
I rode with Mary Campbell
To that broad, bright lagoon;
We left our horses grazing
Till shadows climbed the peak,
And strolled beneath the she-oaks
On the banks of Rocky Creek.
Then home along the river
That night we rode a race,
And the moonlight lent a glory
To Mary Campbell’s face;
And I pleaded for our future
All through that moonlight ride,
Until our weary horses
Drew closer side by side.
Ten miles from Ryan’s Crossing
And five miles below the peak,
I built a little homestead
On the banks of Rocky Creek;
I cleared the land and fenced it
And ploughed the rich, red loam,
And my first crop was golden
When I brought my Mary home.
Now still down Reedy River
The grassy she-oaks sigh,
And the water-holes still mirror
The pictures in the sky;
And over all for ever
Go sun and moon and stars,
While the golden sand is drifting
Across the rocky bars
But of the hut I builded
There are no traces now.
And many rains have levelled
The furrows of the plough;
And my bright days are olden,
For the twisted branches wave
And the wattle blossoms golden
On the hill by Mary’s grave.
LikeLiked by 4 people
All on a Saturday, bright as a bell,
Early and just for the ride,
We took a trip cycling down to the sea,
You and your lady and I.
And oh, what a summer, and oh, what a sun –
Bright to the blue sky it clung.
One day at Whitsun, the sea and the shore,
The summer before the war.
Warm summer places where you could taste the country air,
Chasing our shadows we’d fly,
Down through the narrow lanes, racing the slow trains,
And the last of an age going by.
And we had a good time, and we had some fun,
There was time then when we were all young.
One day at Whitsun, the sea and the shore,
The summer before the war.
Young hearts and young souls, young minds to unfold,
Knowing the untold somehow.
One day at Whitsun, the sea and the shore
The summer before the war.
We found a small cove by the sand and the water,
The salt air was brushing your skin.
With your hand in her hand there was nothing to say
Just watch the sea rushing in.
But oh, what a moment, and oh, what a day –
We held it and it never slipped away.
One day at Whitsun, the sea and the shore,
The summer before the war.
One day at Whitsun, the sea and the shore,
The summer before the war.
LikeLiked by 4 people
It’s fifty long springtimes since she was a bride,
But still you may see her at each Whitsuntide
In a dress of white linen with ribbons of green,
As green as her memories of loving.
The feet that were nimble tread carefully now,
As gentle a measure as age will allow,
Through groves of white blossoms, by fields of young corn,
Where once she was pledged to her true-love.
The fields they stand empty, the hedges grow (go) free–
No young men to turn them or pastures go see (seed)
They are gone where the forest of oak trees before
Have gone, to be wasted in battle.
Down from the green farmlands and from their loved ones
Marched husbands and brothers and fathers and sons.
There’s a fine roll of honor where the Maypole once stood,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.
There’s a straight row of houses in these latter days
All covering the downs where the sheep used to graze.
There’s a field of red poppies (a gift from the Queen)
But the ladies remember at Whitsun,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.
LikeLiked by 3 people
By the shores of old Lake Michigan,
Where the hawk wind blows so cold,
An old Cub fan lay dying
In his midnight hour that tolled.
Round his bed, his friends had all gathered,
They knew his time was short.
And on his head they put this bright blue cap
From his all-time favorite sport.
He told them, “Its late, and its getting dark in here,
And I know its time to go.
But before I leave the line-up,
Boys, there’s just one thing I’d like to know –
Do they still play the blues in Chicago
When baseball season rolls around?
When the snow melts away
Do the Cubbies still play
In their ivy-covered burial ground?
When I was a boy they were my pride and joy,
But now they only bring fatigue,
To the home of the brave
The land of the free
And the doormat of the National League.
He told his friends “You know the law of averages says
Anything will happen that can.”
That’s what it says.
“But the last time the Cubs won a National League pennant
Was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan.
The Cubs made me a criminal,
Sent me down a wayward path,
They stole my youth from me, that’s the truth.
I’d forsake my teachers
To go sit in the bleachers
In flagrant truancy.
And then one thing led to another
And soon I’d discovered alcohol, gambling, dope,
Football, hockey, lacrosse, tennis…
But what do you expect
When you raise up a young boy’s hopes,
And then just crush ’em like so many paper beer cups,
Year after year after year
After year, after year, after year, after year, after year,
‘Til those hopes are just so much popcorn
For the pigeons beneath the el tracks to eat.”
He said, “You know I’ll never see Wrigley Field
anymore before my eternal rest.
So if you have your pencils and your score cards ready,
I’ll read you my last request.
Give me a double header funeral in Wrigley Field,
On some sunny weekend day – no lights –
Have the organ play the “National Anthem”
And then a little ‘na, na, na, na, hey hey, hey, Goodbye’
Make six bullpen pitchers carry my coffin
And six ground keepers clear my path.
Have the umpires bark me out at every base
In all their holy wrath.
Its a beautiful day for a funeral. Hey Ernie, let’s play two!
Somebody go get Jack Brickhouse to come back
And conduct just one more interview.
Have the Cubbies run right out into the middle of the field.
Have Keith Moreland drop a routine fly.
Give everybody two bags of peanuts and a frosty malt,
And then I’ll be ready to die.
Build a big fire on home plate out of your Louisville Slugger baseball bats, and toss my coffin in.
Let my ashes blow in a beautiful snow
From the prevailing 30-mile-an-hour southwest wind.
When my last remains go flying over the left-field wall,
We’ll bid the bleacher bums adieu.
And I will come to my final resting place, out on Waveland Avenue.”
The dying man’s friends told him to cut it out.
They said “Stop it, that’s an awful shame.”
He whispered, “Don’t cry, we’ll meet by and by,
Near the Heavenly Hall of Fame.”
He said, “I’ve got season’s tickets to watch the Angels now,
So its just what I’m going to do.
But you, the living, you’re stuck here with the Cubs,
So its me that feels sorry for you!”
And he said, “Ah, play that lonesome losers’ tune,
That’s the one I like the best.”
And he closed his eyes, and slipped away
It’s the Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request.
And here it is –
Do they still play the blues in Chicago
When baseball season rolls around?
When the snow melts away
Do the Cubbies still play
In their ivy-covered burial ground?
When I was a boy they were my pride and joy,
But now they only bring fatigue,
To the home of the brave
The land of the free
And the doormat of the National League.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer’s day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land
Now, I understand, what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they’ll listen now
Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand
Now, I understand, what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they’ll listen now
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you
Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frame less heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can’t forget
Like the strangers that you’ve met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow
Now, I think I know what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they’re not listening still
Perhaps they never will
LikeLiked by 3 people
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I feel the trembling tingle of a sleepless night
Creep through my fingers and the moon is bright
Beams of blue come flickering through my window pane
Like gypsy moths that dance around a candle flame
And I wonder if you know
That I never understood
That although you said you’d go
Until you did I never thought you would
Moonlight used to bathe the contours of your face
While chestnut hair fell all around the pillow case
And the fragrance of your flowers rest beneath my head
A sympathy bouquet left with the love that’s dead
And I wonder if you know
That I never understood
That although you said you’d go
Until you did, I never thought you would
Never thought the words you said were true
Never thought you said just what you meant
Never knew how much I needed you
Never thought you’d leave, until you went
Morning comes and morning goes with no regret
And evening brings the memories I can’t forget
Empty rooms that echo as I climb the stairs
And empty clothes that drape and fall on empty chairs
And I wonder if you know
That I never understood
That although you said you’d go
Until you did, I never thought you would
LikeLiked by 3 people
And then there is this:
LikeLiked by 2 people
I love how our conversations on this blog range so freely from dug up surprises, and – via poetry – to garbage, and compost; from shit to Shinola, if you will. Never a dull moment with this congress of baboons.
LikeLiked by 3 people
me, too…fascinating minds in this group.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’t know that anything is OT at this time, but if it is, this is.
This Thanksgiving – actually tomorrow, 11/23 – will be my 50th anniversary of arriving at these shores. Since arriving in Minnesota in 1972, this is the first time that Denmark has had snow before us. Ha! Perhaps it’s too early to gloat, but I have to admit, it feels good for a change.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Happy Golden Jubilee!
LikeLiked by 3 people
good lyric poems . thanks all.
LikeLike