OT A few old poems

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Navy1 - 03 Jul 2005 16:08 GMT

Here are a few of my favorites:

A MEMORY OF CHILDHOOD
In the dust of an August noon
The sun shone so bright
My eyes half closed
In protest of the light.

The music of grasshoppers
Hung in the still air.
An old country road
Stretched from here to there.

There was a wonder I shared
Some glory I heard
In a child's open mind;
But with age, faded the word.

What did I see?
What did I feel?
I can't remember,
Yet my soul sings.

Loujean M Baker
15 July 1991

CHILDREN ARE WINGS
Our children are the wings of our dreams
But if we depend on those wings to fly,
Like Icarus, we will drown
In the seas of our ambitions.

Loujean M Baker
15 July 1991

SPEEDING CAR
That flash of metal past my car window,
Is an idiot going nowhere fast.
As I get to the signal, down a mile or two,
I see that he got there at last!

Loujean M Baker
18 November 1991

and this is my absolute favorite as I wrote it before I saw
Gettysburg. When I went there, I was amazed at myself for the
feelings that actually struck me.

THOUGHTS AT GETTYSBURG
The sounds of battle have gone,
Birdsong fills the sky.
No more the shout of a gun,
But a whispered, "I cry."

The rustle of flags
Dragging in the dust,
Said brothers, each other,
No longer could trust.

The tears of sister,
Mother, widow, and wife,
Dampened the dry dust
Of the land rending strife.

A tall man in a hat
Stood under the tree;
A dream in his eye
For all to be free.

"Four score and seven",
How could we forget?
I, II, Korea, and Nam,
We haven't learned yet.

Loujean M Baker
December 1988

Enjoy folks. I am looking at them again.

Loujean
I'm a poet and don't know it, my feet are Longfellow's.
Navy1
Retired and love it.
Throw that FISH out and
put in an S to email me.

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Gwen Love - 03 Jul 2005 22:06 GMT

You definitely have a poet's soul!
Gwen

> Here are a few of my favorites:
>
[quoted text clipped - 81 lines]
> Throw that FISH out and
> put in an S to email me.

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Navy1 - 04 Jul 2005 01:59 GMT

>You definitely have a poet's soul!
>Gwen

Thanks, Gwen,
I haven't written for quite a while, but now and then ideas are coming
again. I lost the incentive after my husband died, but I think I'll
start again. Sometimes they write themselves. I'm thinking now of
pain, of many kinds. I just finished watching the special on CMT
about Country Music through wars we fought. It was marvelous, but
left one thinking an awful lot, because I had forgotten about 9/11 and
'Nam. My husband, Mel, went to Viet Nam as a personnel clerk, so
wasn't exposed to a lot of the fire, but as he and many others said,
"There was no front line in Vietnam."

Loujean

THOSE WHO WAIT

As many a woman had waited in vain,
For a letter from the East,
She watched each train go by
And saw the others' postal feast.

Finally, came a postman's call;
But wait, it's in another's hand.
"Should I open it, do I dare?"
The letter sent from that far land.

Slowly, the first words I read,
"A friend is writing this for me.
I've been very foolish, very dumb.
I stuck my hand in a fan, you see.

I am so sorry you had to wait
For word from over here.
I do wish that I could phone & say:
'I stopped off for a beer.'

What I have seen cannot be born;
My friends did not stay around.
Those that did not return home,
Were lost in a mortar's sound."

Loujean M Baker
Spring 1990

Navy1
Retired and love it.
Throw that FISH out and
put in an S to email me.

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