Old Men And Infidels Books

Dragons Fly

2020-10-16

Short poem for AWC

The Flame

2020-10-11

50 word poem for AWC

Sweet Tea

2020-06-20

short summer poem.

Fifty words

six decades

The Animus Moon

2019-05-13

poem Animus Moon

T’was the night before Christmas

2018-12-21

T’was the night before Christmas, I was beginning to crash,
When two boys from the village got into a stash,
Of their grandmother’s cassava. She was saving it special,
And had it back of the house, there, under a kettle.

But, it, they had found, slicing it up for a snack,
(that kills if not washed down and cooked up just right)
And they gave that a try, by the time that I saw them,
Retching and puking themselves on beds in Men’s Ward.
There,
Under the lights that are kept on all night,
To make the rats bashful or to put up much fight,
Over food that is lying about in the ward,
Or get over-bold and gnaw charts, I wrote orders.

The boys got their IVs and charcoal, as well.
And, this time it worked. God has mercy for fools.
So, I walked back to Six, through the silvered moonlight,
That you get when the harmattan’s blowing just right,
In time to change, get some tea and a biscuit,
And go off to rounds on the fevers, and boils,
malaria, the typhoid, the burns, the kwashiokor,
TB and ulcers of skin, gut and soul,
Which characterize, in part, the Fall of us all.

The kid in bed two is a pitiful sight—taut skin over bone,
We have tried all we have. All to do we have done.
Yet, every few days, there’s a fever, despite us.
Then there is the girl with the compounded fracture,
Which the local healers set, two weeks ago Tuesday,
Her arm, she can’t feel, not a finger she moves,
It looks like raw meat; it stinks and it oozes.

By five PM, all we doctors are gathered,
In the front of the clinic, with bushels, we’ve come,
With oranges and good will, we go to the bedsides,
We’ve left just before, with frowns and concerns.

We’ve come back, now, with spouses and children,
And in one case a puppy, ‘though he stayed outside,
To sing to our patients, of Jesus first Coming,
To sing alleluia, to staff nurses and aides,
To sing of a Virgin, alone in a stable,
To sing of a Miracle, expected by none,
To sing to the people in pain and in danger
To sing of saving from care and from sin.

T’was the night before Christmas, I’m too tired to eat.
But among Jesus’ people I sing and I greet,
Such a great Christmas, the best I remember.
Merry Christmas to all, this dry warm December.

(NB: It has been a practice since the early days of the Baptist Medical Centre in Nalerigu, East Malaprusi District of Ghana, West Africa, for the doctors and their families to carol through the wards on Christmas eve and present small gifts, usually oranges, to each of the patients, their people, and the staff.)

Scotsman’s Lament

2018-11-25

While rustic, wrothy reckless Scots
Reviewed from crags the glistening tarns,
Amid the gales and gusts of yore,
You can believe their knees were sore.

The warmest hose which have not trod
Through bog or kyll to martial tune,
But else have kept to road and brig,
Still lack a certain latitude
And choose to venture not above
The Tropic of the Fatted Calf.

In liked manner woolen twill
Of partied-colored, tartan pleats
Many a highland lad does gird
However, dares not to descend,
In fear lest it be called a Skirt!

Bereft of covering, there to lurk,
This most of all neglected joints,
By Winters’ hard eternal work
The knee is redden, roughed and rouged.

No doubt the Scots’ renown’ed scowl
Of dour men, of mien and brow,
Is due to knees, in part or whole,
Which lack some lotion to console.

[written for Joseph H Boutwell in a gift of a kilt, his first]

Vigil

2018-11-25

Sailors do say an aft chase is long,
Light after darkness, dark after dawn.
Progress is ventured by scarcely a sign,
The set of a rigging or quench of a limn.
Close vigils are kept in aft chases, 'though,
Watch after watch and slow ever slow.
The battle may come at a time never sought,
Down the wind quarter and out of the fog.
Soon there is volley and steel and the smoke,
Pike against borders, stroke against stroke.
Then all is quiet except for the cries
Of weary survivors, spars groan as alive.

When time comes for me, for my own bloody chase,
Dark after light, haste before Grace,
I hope I see backwards as forward I flee,
That someone stands there a Vigil for me.

[composed for a friend whose father was then in hospital and not expected to live]

True Romance

2018-11-25

On filling up an old clay pot
scarred by years of harsh neglect
the luster now but slowly glows
For the gloom of day just past
Filled from dawn to dusk entire:
Labor, heat and dust and sweat.

At the dawning, labor bidding,
Worker sprang in cool of morn.
Pours out vigor, boasts his Man-strength,
Flinging careless burdening stone
mindless then to hoard in morning
strength to last until day’s done.

The sun up rising, now comes heat,
Wavering light off white of stone,
The Worker bent and slick with life-sweat,
white with dust of stones of toil,
slowly fitting stone to stone
Edge by edge by edge he builds.

Flagstones heedless of his caring,
Redden fingers, now toil-crook’d,
Scrapes the skin, that stripped lies naked
In the sere and dusty heat
salting tongue, creation’s dust.

In way of work, the hand of Man,
finds the buried pot's thin rim,
Stops within the glare of noontide.
Traces line, and scraping dust
Lifts the antique form from timeless,
in claw’ed hands, there gleams old pot,
empty, whole. And speaking tidings
Ages past, heroic …vast

Glancing light in eve of day
Light the work that sits complete
precise stone it showing solid,
Cares not of its arduous making...
Worker thinks and fills the vessel,
cleaned with care to lustrous shine
Bright now with his work-whet water

Slowly places truths abandoned
Longtime lost to little men,
Oaths that multitudes have wasted,
Ridiculed; now, smoothed and cleaned,
Once soiled, now a promise radiant,
Shines as new revealed, it gleams;
Odd-shaped truths go unsmoothed also,
Placed with care within the clay.
Worker finding a space yet bidding
Adds he more discarded things:
Abandoned beauty, honor spited
Respect tattered goes within
‘Till together (shaken carefully)
Olden vessel, again now full.

In the dim’ed day, now gloaming,
Pale the work complete stands out
Standing there for tasks already
For whatever workers new
Coming on the morrow dictate,
Build on works by known-less Worker,
Undeserved inherited wealth.

Worker’s still and now he moves not,
Work-formed hands stop in repose.
And the vessel shines ennobled
Stands upon the lonesome center,
Of the work of solid stone;
Waits itself for workers coming
At the sunrise, to arrive,
To be taken up and cherished
Or upon the rosy morn,
Smashed apart in careless fashion
Smashed apart, its content be
Lost to all by inattention,
Lost to those who cannot see...

Poem on the Death of a Young Friend

2018-11-25

What can you say when one dies out of time?
When the promise of years yields a handful of days?

The adventure of death is best led by the ones,
Who are frothed full with deeds, both the great and the small,
Or with gall;
Thus making, of Death, a surcease for the trials:
Trophies brief, lost, and triumphs cheap, brazen;
Dam’ed defeats, profound, shameful and sure,
Which death’s seal finds finished, the entire forsaken.

But blooms (for girls be our kindred’s fair blossoms),
Should unfold and ripened with time and with love.
Nor should they fall, wilting, against proper timing,
Among the withered roots of our kindred’s demise.

More, what malign wraith bids a body play rebel,
And unmakes its mistress to hideous death,
To leave us all Jill-less thence forward forever;
Bereft of her wit, her wonder and grace—
Our futures turned sere, cold and somber?

Would not it be better, more proper and right-some,
Old Mentor to die, young Atlas to live?
In like, aged I should have ashes mine scattered,
While Jill gladdens hearts right and left as she wont?

I feel a great river of Me has come slower,
Yet wider and slighter to fade out in swamp;
While Jill’s, snow-melt cascade of running bright water,
Should canyons cut deeply long way on its course.

E’en yet, we old rivers, embanked and embedded
Find us made new in the meeting of streams,
Revital, renew and restock with her will
We old ones once more may be crystalline kills.

Jill’s like that, you know, she inhabits our lives;
Invigors our thoughts and engenders our laughs.
She is gone.
And I grieve for my loss and her leaving,
Both selfish and sanguine these sentiments mine.

But the truth is, we know, when our tears are abated,
It’s she’s still here ‘moungst us, thought, motive and mime.
She will colour our goings, our comings, our triumphs,
But better yet into our faults, failings and fears,
For she’s shown us the way it is to be done,
To wring us a living from losing and pain,
We all will die likewise (as Jill has done first-wise)
Not a one of us gets to leave here alive,
While we wait we’ve a model of what is it to us
Much better than art or conceit may contrive.

Shiloh Station

2018-11-25

Shiloh Station- a Winter's Walk