Is Frosty saying hello or goodbye?

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Winter

Even Mother Nature Can't Please Everyone

A scant five months ago our final rose
was plucked, another month for husking corn,
and when the first tomato comes, who knows?
The sparrows work their little hearts to death
attempting to find nourishment enough.
Homeowners shovel, watch their frozen breath,
decrying buried cars, then note how tough
it is to navigate on greasy roads--
and glare at those with show-off four wheel drive.
Shed roofs can barely stand their heavy loads.
Some snowblowers are only half alive.

But youngsters five to twelve or maybe more
love forts and secret caves and snowball fights.
They eye their winter sliding things, deplore
those scattered days when spring-like grassy sites
emerge to spoil their fun--and pray for news
of coming storms to close their school up tight,
thus forcing out those blasted homework blues
and giving them a reason for delight.

Nursing Home

Those silent wheelchairs stalk the quiet hall,
some moving slowly, others not at all.
Yet every single one contains a face,
a wrinkled, careworn soul who’s now a case
to study, care for, wash and sometimes groom
in private space unlike their former room
at home where everything familiar stood
around them looking bright and young and good,
reminding them of lives they’d mostly had
before their limbs grew weak and outlook sad.

Expressions say a lot to clue us in
about their thoughts. Some patients even grin
and say hello, while others seem to be
in still another place that we can’t see.
It’s hard to watch this scene, but caring staff
look after them with love to help them laugh
(sometimes), applying something more than skill
and coaxing them to work beyond their will
to just once more exceed their state and try
an extra day their status to belie.

One morning little kids came in to sing,
a simple-sounding, entertaining thing,
pre-schoolers all, their scrubbed and shiny faces
bent on bringing Christmas cheer to places
in our minds not used to innocence.
Their songs and gestures lacking all pretense
gave little hint that some of them one day
might find a waiting wheelchair as their pay.
The lyrics weren’t the least bit hard to follow,
but some of us then found it tough to swallow.

V-Day

What special day is almost here?
A time to honor those most dear.
We look around and note the hate,
the wars, dissension and debate
to settle squabbles large and small
as if they mattered much at all.

We lose perspective and decry
our differences, though we could try
to see humanity as if we were
but one, and doing so prefer
an end to suffering of all kinds—
each other’s blessed valentines.