Singingclarice's Blog

Count Your Blessings Before They Fade

 It was the first Christmas I remember
Maybe because it was 1944 and my dad lay wounded in a hospital
Shrapnel in his back from a German U-Boat attack
My uncles Julius and Louie were on ships in the South Pacific
And Uncles Art and Virgil were sailing somewhere
Their where about’s unknown

 I remember seeing
Against a white shower on a all but deserted road
Reverend Risenhauer’s 1936 Lincoln Zephyr a navy shadow
Emerging out of the swirls of snow
The old folks, women and children waiting his arrival
Had sons, brothers, fathers and husbands battling for freedom
On foreign soils and seven seas

 They’d came in cars, horse drawn sleighs and wagons
Families like the Griffins and their seven passengers
Ma and Pa German who’d picked up twenty parishioners along the way
All bundled up on the wagon bed their carols floating in the air
Small groups of walkers made their way against the stinging wind
And here and there a horse and rider could be seen

 In the Mt Morris Bank’s second story meeting room
We gathered that Christmas Eve
I didn’t know then, that we were one of five such groups
From Our Savior Lutheran Church that the good pastor visited
On a circuit route because gas was scarce then
So he came to us using the gas donated with their ration stamps

 I stood in front of the congregation a wee small girl
Dressed in red and shivering fright
To say my Bible verse
They gave us bags of peppermint and homemade taffy
And I wondered what I’d done to make my mommy cry
She told me she was wishing Daddy was there

 As a  slow tear baths  my cheek
I count my blessings before they fade
Christmas came again the following year
I said my bible verse in church
And mama cried happy tears
The war was over, daddy and my uncles had came home

 (clarice) 01/15/2012

She was a girl with a suitcase full of dreams
With a ticket to ride for a visit
To a land of kings and queens
A bolting spirit looking to be lost in transit

The wind, the road and the way
And a bus named desire
Lure the young runaway
Pretty in polka dots, ancient expired

Waiting not the wrath of God
Her lament not to see a land again
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow

Dark shadows scorpion is left behind
The road home is but a dream
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow

Hang on to your hat and carry on
Abbadon’s sword is buried in hell
Nostalgia takes the form of a swan
Graceful satire flight from evils death knell

Now a lady in waiting, waiting at the bus stop
Her golden curls flying in the wind
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow

A waiting game she dare not lose
Returning to Bogan would be the final straw
Greed and lust, thrust, tentacles reaching, black and blue
The road ahead a beckoning freedom call

To a land of kings and queens
Freedoms dream takes her away from the land
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow

(clarice)
-6/16/2014

The plight of many young girls and boys is finding themselves lost
Not wanting to live in the abusive atmosphere that has been their lot
We all want to say it isn’t so. These desperate children searching for freedom
This poem is written for them

 “Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow”  from Tennyson’s Morte D’Arthur