Fort Fisher Sounds by Dennis Allen Lange

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Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! The Union navy fires!
Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! – the Civil War’s bass choirs.
Boom, boom! Fort Fisher’s what the cannon’s see
As North tests its invincibility.

Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! Shells whistle, fall, and crash!
Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! They fall like fists and smash!
Boom, boom! Boom, boom!  And one by one the guns
Within the fort become exploding suns.

Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! The navy’s cannons roar!
Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! Can ears take any more?!
Boom, boom!  Midst shells, the fort can see (boom, boom!)
The blue ranks forming in the smoke and gloom.

Then silence yawns –
…………………………………..a bird, if live, could sing,
Be clearly heard if ears did not still ring.
A caterpillar, in his softest crawl
Would sound like chalk that screeches on the wall.

Did some slip to the ugly booming brutes
And quickly push on all the buttons – Mute?
Or did the noisy nightmare swiftly end
And all awake at once, calm comprehend?

And then –
…………………shrieks, moans, and whistles – boats begin!
Shriek, shriek! Whistle, whistle! A hellish din!
And all the demons in the devil’s hell
Were screaming, shrieking, moaning – whistles tell

Two armies of the blue to charge the fort
That guarded well the Carolina port.
A rata, a rata, a rat tat tat!
Crescendo swells! A rata tat tat!

Shriek, shriek! Whistle, whistle! They blow and moan!
Guns roar! Men yell! They fall dead with a groan.
The cannons more selective now – boom, boom!
And midst the sounds, Fort Fisher meets its doom.

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Another poem of mine about Fort Fisher:
https://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/impregnable-fort-fisher-by-dennis-allen-lange/

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http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/fortfisher/history-articles/fort-fisher.html

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

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Rock, Paper, Scissors – haiku by Dennis Allen Lange

–
Barn dwarfs man.
Barn dwarfed by mountains
Which men dwarf.

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photo by Steven Dickinson at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/o744plw/Barn+in+British+Columbia

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* The haiku I write are lines of 3-5-3 syllables instead of 5-7-5.

See Haiku article here for explanation, if needed: https://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/haiku/

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

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To The Autumnal Night by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Mild Splendor of the various-vested Night!
…Mother of wildly-working visions! hail!
I watch thy gliding, while with watery light
…Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil;
And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud
…Behind the gather’d blackness lost on high;
And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloud
…Thy placid lightning o’er th’ awakened sky.

Ah, such is Hope! As changeful and as fair!
…Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;
Now hid behind the dragon-wing’d Despair:
…But soon emerging in her radiant might
She o’er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care
…Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.

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Redressing The Grievous by Dennis Allen Lange

–

Repeat a lie, repeat a lie,
Like ocean waves that batter,
And people will believe the lie
And nothing else will matter.

Expose the lie and spread the truth,
The damage thus repairing.
And people will receive the truth,
Return to rightful bearing.

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photo by rkirbycom (Roger) at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/nVrkilW/Ocean+Waves

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

 

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Vague Vegan Error – haiku by Dennis Allen Lange

–
Lettuce put
Our heads together.
No – cabbage.

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photo by Michal Zacharzewski at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mhitQkk/Cabbage

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* The haiku I write are lines of 3-5-3 syllables instead of 5-7-5.

See Haiku article here for explanation, if needed: https://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/haiku/
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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.
 

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To Have A Friend – author unknown

I went out to find a friend,
…But could not find one there.
I went out to be a friend,
…And friends were everywhere!

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Brain Freeze by Dennis Allen Lange

–

The ice cream is before me in the bowl
And suddenly my spoon is far too small.
I need a shovel so to eat it whole
(My Tongue’s the one who makes this urgent call).

Surrendering to it with eager Eyes,
I take a bite and quickly make it two,
And then a third, exulting in the prize
That’s sweet and melts, so I don’t have to chew.

Almost as quick as pleasure is the pain
As though my forehead rammed into a wall,
As though the ice cream climbed into my Brain
Not like the normal foods that take a fall.

The Brain says, “Stop!” The Tongue says to the Hand,
“I want some more.  Now shovel even faster!”
And Hand says, caught between the two commands,
“Who do I listen to?  Who is the master?”

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photo by Adrian van Leen at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/nofeuL4/chocolate+icecream+indulgence2

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

 

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Ode To Evening by William Collins

If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
…Like thy own solemn springs,
…Thy springs, and dying gales,

O nymph reserv’d, while now the bright-hair’d sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
…With brede ethereal wove,
…O’er hang his wavy bed:

Now air is hush’d, save where the weak-ey’d bat,
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,
…Or where the beetle winds
…His small but sullen horn,

As oft he rises ‘midst the twilight path,
Against the Pilgrim borne in heedless hum:
…Now teach me, maid compos’d,
…To breathe some soften’d strain,

Whose numbers, stealing thro’ my darkning vale
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,
…As, musing slow, I hail
…Thy genial lov’d return!

For when thy folding-star arising shews
His play circlet, at his warning lamp
…The fragrant Hours, and elves
…Who slept in flowers the day,

And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge,
And sheds the fresh’ning dew, and lovelier still,
…The pensive Pleasures sweet
…Prepare thy shadowy car.

Then lead, calm vot’ress, where some sheety lake
Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow’d pile,
…Or upland fallows grey
…Reflect its last cool gleam.

But when chill blust’ring winds, or driving rain,
Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut
…That from the mountain’s side,
…Views wilds, and swelling floods,

And hamlets brown, and dim-discover’d spires,
And hears their simple bell, and marks o’er all
…Thy dewy fingers draw
…The gradual dusky veil.

While Spring shall pour his show’rs, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve!
…While Summer loves to sport,
…Beneath thy ling’ring light;

While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves,
Or Winter yelling thro’ the troublous air,
…Affrights thy shrinking train,
…And rudely rends thy robes;

So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed,
Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lip’d Health
…Thy gentlest influence own,
…And hymn thy fav’rite name!

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Sails For Sliding – haiku by Dennis Allen Lange

–
Two sailboats
Sitting calmly on
Sea of glass.

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photo by Constantin Jurcut at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/meT0FTE/calm+1

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* The haiku I write are lines of 3-5-3 syllables instead of 5-7-5.

See Haiku article here for explanation, if needed: https://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/haiku/
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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

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The Bonnie Earl Of Murray – anonymous

You Highlands and you Lowlands.
…Oh! where have you been?
They have slain the Earl of Murray,
…And have laid him on the green.

Now woe be to thee, Huntly,
…And wherefore did you sae?
I bade you bring him with you,
…But forbad you him to slay.

He was a brave gallant,
…And he rid at the ring;
And the bonnie Earl of Murray,
…Oh! he might have been a king.

He was a brave gallant,
…And he play’d at the ba’;
And the bonnie Earl of Murray
…Was the flower among them a’.

He was a brave gallant,
…And he play’d at the glove;
And the bonnie Earl of Murray,
…Oh! he was the Queen’s love.

Oh! long will his lady
…Look over the castle Down,
Ere she see the Earl of Murray
…Come sounding through the town.

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(I have changed some words, such as “hae” to “have”, etc.)

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