Saturday, January 20, 2007

A Sestina Calling for Retirement

I.

On days when students wrestle over poems
Like "Message Clear" that focus in on Christ
I often walk among them offering advice,
My favorite way to run a senior class.
Of course, it's all because of how they grow
From freshmen to adults in four short years.

II.

And I have also grown in all these years.
I once had dreams to follow after Christ,
But at college, once I joined the freshmen class,
My vocation vanished as I watched my knowledge grow.
I forsook the collar despite my mom's advice
And now I try my hand at writing poems.

III.

As a kid I wrote a series of poems
Whose subject never failed to be Christ.
I kept that reverent practice up for years
And solicited from my teachers their advice.
I was the star of catechism class,
But my poetic talent did not grow.

IV.

My Catholic belief also ceased to grow
The day I put my stock in soldiers of Christ
Who had been practicing their trade for years,
The Jesuits, always ready to give advice
To help us write ecclesiastical poems
As exercises of our faith in class.

V.

And now I sit in front of my own class,
The last I'll have in all these many years,
And sure enough they're all here writing poems.
In their verse they offer sage advice
To juniors who haven't had the chance to grow
Into duplicates of martyred Christ.

VI.

That's how seniors moan each year, "Oh, Christ!
What are you doing having us write poems?
We've spent our time, going on four years,
And you still think we have some room to grow!
Well let us give you a word of sage advice.
We can't spent all our time on this one class."

VII.

Yes, Christ! I've come full circle with this class.
For poems I've simply run out of advice.
After all these years I'm the one who's ceased to grow.

--James D. Starkey

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Northern Exposure

We bought this house when we were in our twenties.
The bad news is it faces toward the North,
Plus the yard is filled with blue spruce trees
And in the wind the snow blows back and forth.

The third big storm this month is due to fall
And I still haven't dug out from the last.
The white stuff's piled outside our kitchen wall.
We just aren't ready for this wintry blast.

Who was to know when making this dumb purchase
That shoveling snow would dominate my time
And icy patches would spread right out to hurt us.
Oh put me down for some more temperate clime.

What's this I hear of Global Warming?
All I know's the snow is swarming.

--James D. Starkey

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

The Feeling of Contentment is Hard Won

The feeling of contentment is hard won.
The children grown and money in the bank,
The task of grading papers finally done,
My long career has gone into the tank.

I've rid the basement of our store of books,
They fill one half of our two car garage.
The many tests my doting students took
All vanished now, a scholarly mirage.

So where is the peace my thirty years have earned?
Why do I rise at five each school day,
While thoughts of classes on my mind still turn,
Classes o'er which I really had no say?

Retirement is a lovely perk,
But I still feel like I'm at work.

--James D. Starkey

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Retribution

Tom Tancredo's point's well made.
With holy sites he'd like to trade.

Their holy sites Tom has defined,
But ours are kind of hard to find.

The terrorists brought down our church
And left us all here in the lurch.

There's restaurants and shopping malls
And subway cars and that is all.

TV stations, that's one more
That could contribute to the gore.

But in the East the sites abound
And Babylon is close around.

It's here that mankind got its start
From Eden to the Sacred Heart.

What's fair is fair, Tom's apt to say.
Let's nuke them on the Sabbath Day.

--James D. Starkey

Thursday, January 4, 2007

Christmas, 2006

The break is over; the kids have all flown home.
Our two part blizzard cut their visit short.
Abandoned are the snowshoe trails we roamed,
And, yes, the downhill tracks we skied for sport.

The first storm struck the week before they came
And four foot drifts clogged up our little place,
Yet Christmas day remained for us the same
As against the next onslaught we did brace.

The next storm dumped its load on New Year's Day.
The TV news said airports might all close,
So we packed the cars and drove out in the fray
And got out on the road before the city rose.

We made it to the plane on time
In spite of all this wintry rime.

--James D. Starkey

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

They Say One Should Make Resolutions

They say one should make resolutions
Through some kind of moral convolution.
On the first of each year
The conscience rings clear
And for misdeeds it makes restitution.

--James D. Starkey