Mother Nature Can Be Fickle

Winter’s cold is Mother Nature’s way
Of saying, lie with me now, lay your head on my breast
It’s snow, a blanket under which to lay
Neath a crystal cover, enjoying winter's cold caress

Frost rimed windows … Mother Nature’s art
Icy abstractions painted with frosty finesse
Crystalline concoctions that form only a part
Of Mother Natures wonderful winter largesse

Ice coated limbs of slope shouldered trees
droop drowsily down as if fallen asleep
Unable to sway in winter’s frigid breeze
Appear as white mounds, when the snow drifts deep

The stillness one hears on cold winter nights
Broken by the sudden crack of ice laden boughs
The ethereal essence of undulating northern lights
Headlights in the sky for Nature’s snowplows

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poem by David Whalen
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Invisible Children

Invisible Children

Their mothers can see them, but to us they’re invisible
These fate-cursed little creatures with long lashed, limpid eyes
In the poor part of town where hunger is permissible
Empty cupboards are opened with sad, hopeless sighs

Yes, we glimpse them occasionally, when famine strikes other nations
We see them on TV, broadcast from strange sounding lands
Hunger’s a democratic denizen, sparing no child it’s sensations
And welcomes our own crying children into it’s cold callous hands

Submission into malnutrition is the chronic condition
These hidden, unseen children must confront every day
Sentenced by hunger to a living perdition
On their mom’s leaden heart, these cruel conditions heavily weigh

While most of us worry about our kids overeating
About high fructose content, roughage and such
These kids, with ribs like infantile armatures, arms outstretched and pleading

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poem by David Whalen
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Let's Just Suppose

Let’s just suppose
That over four thousand young men
Got jobs and got married
Became normal Americans and then

Let’s just suppose
These same young men of our new generation
Stayed home and avoided
Nightmares and mutilation

Let’s just suppose
Over four thousand lives were sadly expended
In a hostile land, so far away
In a war built on lies, and is yet open-ended

Let’s just suppose
That many untold billions in funds
Had over four thousand of those young men
Building our country, in lieu of bearing guns

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poem by David Whalen
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Grampa? A tribute to fathers (especially the 'ol f**ts)

Grampa?

It’s a question usually posed with an inquisitive frown
On an angelic face with large, limpid eyes
And whatever I’m doing, I stop and put down
Peer sagely over bifocals and look grandfatherly wise

“Can you fix this grampa, ” shy tentative pleas
Red plastic toy held out in soft delicate fingers
Tear tracks on pink cheeks, scraped, dirt darkened knees
Touches deep to my heart, on child’s face my gaze lingers

Sad, liquid eyes under brows scrunched and worried
Timid, flowerlike smile slowly blossoms on small face
My broken toy examination, slow and unhurried
Parts and pieces put back together with exaggerated grace

Rose bud lower lip, bitten by tiny white teeth
With young brow furrowed with intense concentration
A wondrous thing, this childhood belief

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poem by David Whalen
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Getting to Know You

Poetry pretty much mirrors
Different stages and places
In one’s life

It’s given away… in what you say
In your sense
of peace or strife

Your words describe you…
They strip from your soul
The shrouds and lay bare…

Your true thoughts, your ambitions
Your insights, your inhibitions
You perhaps unknowingly share

It’s a venting perhaps…
A release from the restraints…
Of cold hard reality

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poem by David Whalen
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The Decline Of Man (And The Rise Of Women)

Throughout the ages until the recent day
Strength and size ruled the world
But those times have long passed away

The days when women truly needed men
Were all the norm back then
Now gone Ne’er to be back again

Machines that farm and till our land
Can make our goods much faster than
The hand of any common working man

It’s the age of women (perhaps long overdue)
It’s machines and technology and many
Men have no clue

So now it’s become a world of finesse
Where strength and size
Could matter less

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poem by David Whalen
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Are We Better Now Than Then (stand naked in front of a full length mirror)

Better Now Than Then?
(stand naked in front of a full length mirror and try not to giggle or gag)

We were then:
Small wiry bipeds on dry plains of Serengeti
Stringy, tight muscles, strong hands, with long slender fingers
Low, beetled brow over dark eyes, seeing distant
Long pointed nails, ridged and discolored, tip slender delicate digits

We are now:
Tall upright bipeds, on dry, sere, parking lot at Walmart
Folds of flaccid fat, fallow, loose, hanging over belts
Squeaky-clean, sausage-like, weak, fat fingers
Skin stretched tight over pudgy, pillow-like hands

We were then:
Hardy travelers, to distant mist shrouded mountains
Feet naked, soles hardened, over plains of rock, sand and gravel
Long slender bows, slung over lean shoulders and arrows in hide pouches,
Obsidian knives, tucked in scant leather loincloths

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poem by David Whalen
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Signs of the Times

Signs of the times in the good ‘ol USA

G.E and G.M downgraded to letters of the alphabet
People living out of their Hummers
U.S. economy outpaced by Tibet
Bank officers indicted in growing numbers

Drive-by shootings reduced to dissing and shouting
Between glassless windows of derelict cars up on blocks
McDonald’s dollar menu becomes haute cuisine
Waste paper refers to your savings and stocks

Insufficient funds refers to your bank’s money
Treasury Dept. seized by Asian lenders for late debt payments
Swimming pools used to grow real tasty algae
Grandkids moving in with mom and dad, who’ve moved in with their own parents

Having a job and feeling guilty about it
Not having a job and feeling useless and disrespected
Applying for jobs and feeling hopeless throughout it

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poem by David Whalen
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Ode to the worthy, earthy and free versey

Of what would Spring be
Of what pleasures to see
Were it not for the words
Of a poetic potpourri

A bouquet composed Of fresh
and e'er changing compositions
Of prose composed of flesh,
The heart, and earthy renditions

It's the blossoms of Raskin
Whom to me is a rose
In the pleasure in the reading
As is the scent to the nose

It's the petals Of JewelPhoenix
Which she scatters about
Wonders of her writing
Would be hard to be without

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poem by David Whalen
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The next to last pew

An old man was at church last Sunday
He sat in the next to last pew
I slid into the seat right next to him
And gave a him a friendly “hi-dee-do”

He gave me a nod with his time worn brow
Then swiveled his head all around
While his gaze sized up the parishioners
His ears seemed to soak up their sound

His sad gaze seemed to pick out each person
One by one, as he seemed to stare into their soul
To some he nodded, in an approving way
While to others his look was ice cold

I asked if he was a member of this church
I said I wasn’t familiar with him, was he new?
He smiled a soft smile and shook his head no
Said “I’m here most of the time…
here in this next to last pew”

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poem by David Whalen
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