WENDELL SMITH

Wendell Smith

 Candy Factory

The hills are bubbling a confection

poured to a pan cooled cut and eaten.

that has reached hard balled perfection 

and is ready to be beaten

Now that the maples’ orange and crimson,

has been, by wind, whipped to ground;

now, as when penuchi nears completion

although its bubbles roil

and hold their breaths to linger,

now, a beech and oaken splendor

has these hills once more a-boil.

Yet, while these whose grandeur follows glory

may hold their sienna shapes for longer,

they too will soon be stripped

by late fall storms 

which give the scene a final frosting

and leave these leaves

a winter long snow covered

where they become of earth

as they have been earth colored.

Become the earth 

from which they’ll spring

again to summer salad green

and with light’s touch

start sugars synthesizing

out of thin air and water from roots rising;

then, following its swing 

from equinox to zenith and return,

they’ll ripen under autumn’s Sun

that we may taste them in their season 

feast our eyes and know our reason. 

An Ode to Old Blue

All four wheels went round and round

You looked so sweet sitting on the ground

The bubble suction compass I bought with cash

fit so nicely on top of the dash

The Kraco eight track player played Barry Manilow

and those beefy Goodyear sneakers never got stuck in the snow

Bucket seats, three speed stick, that thundering two barrel six

It's amazing we never got any speeding tix

You were mine for ten years from 16 to 26

They were ten great years, memories full of kicks 

***

Contest #2.  Write a clerihew (Edmund Clerihew Bentley, 1875-1956) about a well-known person (e.g., Presidential Candidate or High School teacher/Principal).

WINNER #2 (Presidential Candidate): Wendell Smith

  I hear tell that Donald Trump

  Has been braggin’ on the stump

  How our horizons will seem to widen,

  If we vote for him and not Joe Biden

  Meanwhile, in rebuttal Joseph Biden

  Claims he can make us seem safe, providin’

  We don’t trade in our Democracy

  For four years more of Don's hype-ocracy. 

***

This poem  originally appeared in the Ibbetson Street Press, Issue 54 (January 2024)

Figmentation

The Buddha sat beneath the Bo

‘til nothing bored him anymore

continued sitting hatched a plan

to mitigate the pain huMAN.

The sole path to soul’s success is

not through material excesses

or financially rewarded gumption,

but inconspicuous consumption.

For a happiness that’s beyond measure,

try slowing your pursuits of pleasure

replace desires for what’s in fashion

with great big dollops of compassion.

Eventually you will have to share

your body with the evening air

for even if it buried be

it will escape through roots of tree.

And when the body’s been discarded

the soul (unless it’s been retarded

by its various attachments

like a drunk who uses breath mints)

will with, Oh, what’s the word?

Elation?

merge with the substance of creation