Enslaved by Claude McKay

Oh when I think of my long-suffering race,
For weary centuries, despised, oppressed
Enslaved and lynched, denied a human place
In the great life line of the Christian West;
And in the Black Land disinherited,
Robbed in the ancient country of its birth,
My heart grows sick with hate, becomes as lead,
For this my race that has no home on earth.
Then from the dark depth of my soul I cry
To the avenging angel to consume
The white man’s world of wonders utterly:
Let it be swallowed up in earth’s vast womb,
Or upward roll as sacrificial smoke
To liberate my people from its yoke!

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General George Armstrong Custer by Dennis Allen Lange

–
In West Point class, he was the bottom dweller,
And sought thereafter to escape that cellar.
His road, in Civil War, was thus the rougher,
And Michiganders led by him would suffer.
So no surprise in Little Big Horn’s battle:
He and his men were slaughtered much like cattle.
George Armstrong Custer’s love of war and glory
Made blood and death his most enduring story.

–
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*The Michigan men led by Custer in the Civil War
suffered a larger number of killed and wounded
than any other cavalry brigade in the Union army.

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

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Departed Days by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Yes, dear departed, cherished days,
…Could Memory’s hand restore
Your morning light, your evening rays,
…From Time’s gray arm once more.
Then might this restless heart be still,
…This straining eye might close,
And hope but fainting pinions fold,
…While the fair phantoms rose.

But, like a child in ocean’s arms,
…We strive against the stream,
Each moment farther from the shore
…Where life’s young fountains gleam;
Each moment fainter wave the fields,
…And wider rolls the sea;
The mist grows dark, – the sun goes down, –
…Day breaks, – and where are we?

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Insomnia by Dennis Allen Lange

—

When sheep are clouds and clouds are sheep
…And one lies down at night,
What is it that he counts to sleep
…In failing candlelight?

Does comfort come from clouds that walk,
…Or woolly sheep that fly?
Methinks if clouds or sheep could talk
…They’d tell us who and why.

—

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photo by Kevin Tuck at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mBZsrUW/Sheep+like+the+clouds

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2016.

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Chasing Cats – haiku by Dennis Allen Lange

—

Wrinkled face
On a smooth body
In dreamland.

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photo by Jan Robert Xposid at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/o40gqzI/Sweet+dreams

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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/
——————–

© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2016.

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Eel-Grass by Edna St. Vincent Millay

No matter what I say,
…All that I really love
Is the rain that flattens on the bay,
…And the eel-grass in the cove;
The jingle-shells that lie and bleach
…At the tide-line, and the trace
Of higher tides along the beach:
…Nothing in this place.

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The Pesky Gymnast by Dennis Allen Lange

When little ones climb and explore,
…The toddler gets into all that,
And this, and everything, and more.
…He seems to be an acrobrat.

—

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2016.

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Range-Finding by Robert Frost

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung
And cut a flower beside a ground bird’s nest
Before it stained a single human breast.
The stricken flower bent double and so hung.
And still the bird revisited her young.
A butterfly its fall had dispossessed
A moment sought in air his flower of rest,
Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.
On the bare upland pasture there had spread
O’ernight ‘twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread
And straining cables wet with silver dew.
A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.
The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,
But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.

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Christmas Colors by Dennis Lange

—

(sent in Christmas cards 2015)
—
The colors red and green, those two,
Are Christmas colors, yuletide’s cue,
As though its season after fall
Invites us to another ball.

Green is the holly; green the tree,
And green some stockings that we see.
Green is the mistletoe we hang;
From which some Christmas kissing sprang.

Red are the balls upon the tree;
Red are some stockings filled with glee.
Red’s Santa in his jolly suit,
Until he slides down chimney’s chute.

When put together, red and green,
Have one important thing they mean:
A treasure stored up in the heart
That one adds to, but will not part.

We often dream of one more hue
A blanket thicker than the dew –
A coat of snow that covers all,
A Christmas white that will enthrall.

But topped or not with whipping cream,
Our faces fill with Christmas gleam.
It leaves for us a colored print
Of just how much the season meant.

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photo by Michael Pohl at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mILkay4/Christmas+Bubbles

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2016.

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The Man On The Flying Trapeze – George Lebourne

Once I was happy, but now I’m forlorn,
Like an old coat, all tattered and torn,
Left in this wide world to fret and to mourn,
Betrayed by a wife in her teens.
Oh, the girl that I loved she was handsome,
I tried all I knew her to please,
But I could not please one quarter as well
As the man on the flying trapeze.

Chorus:
He would fly through the air
With the greatest of ease,
This daring young man
On the flying trapeze;
His movements were graceful,
All girls he could please,
And my love he purloined away.

Her father and mother were both on my side,
And very hard tried to make her my bride.
Her father he sighed, and her mother she cried
To see her throw herself away.
‘Twas all no avail, she’d go there every night
And throw him bouquets on the stage,
Which caused him to meet her; how he ran me down
To tell you would take a whole page.

One night I as usual called at her dear home,
Found there her father and mother alone,
I asked for my love, and soon they made known
To my horror that she’d run away.
She’d packed up her goods and eloped in the night
With him with the greatest of ease;
From three stories high he had lowered her down
To the ground on his flying trapeze.

Some months after this, I chanced in a hall,
Was greatly surprised to see on the wall
A bill in red letters that did my heart gall,
That she was appearing with him.
He taught her gymnastics and dressed her in tights
To help him to live at his ease,
And made her assume a masculine name,
And now she goes on the trapeze.

Chorus:
She floats through the air
With the greatest of ease,
You’d think her a man
On the flying trapeze.
She does all the work
While he takes his ease,
And that’s what became of my love.

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A different version was sung in the movie “It Happened One Night”.
Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are both in the scene. (3:32)

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