New Year’s Eve was originally published: Kepler, Jimmie A. “New Year’s Eve,” Poetry & Prose Magazine, January 2012. Volume 3, Issue 15, Moonchild Designs, page 20. http://en.calameo.com/read/000339139f8d88e795466 (January 2012).
Jimmie Aaron Kepler is an award-winning short story writer, poet, and indie author. He is the creator of the science fiction with faith series, The Liberator’s Helper.
Jimmie is an alumnus of The University of Texas at Arlington with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history with minors in English and military science where he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army upon graduation. He served as a commissioned officer on active duty for three years and then five years in the US Army Reserves. He earned Master of Religious Education and Master of Arts degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also holds a Doctor of Education degree in Educational Administration. He sold his first magazine article over 35 years ago and has been writing professionally since then. He lives in a north Dallas Texas suburb with his wife and very demanding cat.
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said:
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”
About “Christmas Bells”
“Christmas Bells” is a minor, yet well known, poem written by a very melancholy Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Christmas morning in 1863 during the midst of the Civil War. It is anti-slavery poem as well as a seasonal favorite.
The poem was written six months after the battle of Gettysburg where 40,000 soldiers lost their life. In addition to despairing over the bloody war, Henry was also mourning the death of his beloved wife Fanny Appleton Longfellow. Fanny died in a tragic fire the same year that the Civil War broke out. In November of 1862 another personal tragedy added to his pain. His son, Union Lieutenant Charles Appleton, was wounded in the Army of the Potomac.
On Christmas morning in 1863, while sitting at his desk at the Craigie House in Cambridge, MA, Henry was inspired to write a poem as he listened to the church bells pealing. Their constancy and joyous ringing inspired him to write “Christmas Bells.” In spite of his sadness, Longfellow expresses his belief in God and innate optimism that indeed:
God is not dead; nor doth he sleep
The Wrong shall fail;
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!
Sometime after 1872 Longfellow’s poem was adapted into a Christmas Carol. John B. Caulkin (1827-1905) was a famous English composer who set the lyrics to a gentle, melodic tune which is reminiscent of bells ringing. The carol is entitled “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Alternative tunes have been written for the lyrics but Caulkin’s melody remains predominant.
I lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1966 – 1967. I was in the seventh and eighth grade. My father was in the United States Air Force at the time. As a student at Portsmouth Junior High School I took field trips to both Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Longfellow was a Bowdoin College graduate and was a faculty member before moving to Cambridge to teach at Harvard. We placed great emphasis when I was in junior high school on a classical education with understanding and appreciation of the arts including poetry.
Sweetheart, do you have a preference on where we go out to eat?
No. Anywhere you want is okay with me dear.
Great, there is a McDonalds’ Restaurant; they have a senior coffee discount …
Oh, but look, there is a Subway Restaurant; I think that would be better.
Okay, Subway it is. I’ll let you off at the door and then park the car.
Do you see anything on the menu you prefer?
No. Anything you want is okay with me dear. We can share a foot-long sub.
Great, how about a foot-long Italian Meatball submarine sandwich?
Oh, but the Black Forest Ham sub; I think that would be better.
Okay, make it a foot-long Black Forest Ham on wheat bread please.
Oh, get whatever you want dear, but white bread …
Ma’am, can you change that to white bread please
I’d like American cheese …
Dear, Pepper Jack; I think that would be better.
Okay, make it Pepper Jack cheese.
We’d like lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, green peppers, banana peppers, jalapeños ……
Anything you want is okay with me dear, but maybe not the tomatoes and pickles …
Ma’am, hold the tomatoes and pickles please.
What if we skipped the green peppers, banana peppers, jalapeños and just got black olives?
Okay, make it black olives and mayonnaise instead of green peppers, banana peppers, jalapeño.
Oh, maybe you should go with the light mayo; remember your waist line …
Yes, dear. Ma’am, we’ll take light mayo instead please.
Sir, do you want to make that a combo with chips and drink?
Dear, we’ve got water and apple slices in the car. No need to splurge, but …
Okay, just the sub, not the combo.
That was a very good lunch. Thank you for taking me out to eat
Aren’t glad I let you have whatever you wanted dear?
And he was glad he remembered,
“Love is patient, and is kind;”
Jimmie Aaron Kepler
Written in Estes Park, Colorado
May 2013
“Going Out to Eat” was originally published in vox poetic. Kepler, Jimmie A. “Going Out to Eat,” vox poetica, January 27, 2014, Retrieved January 27, 2014 from http://voxpoetica.com/eat/.
Photo Credit: By Bill Branson (Photographer) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
My maternal grandfather’s name is Stayton Henry May. He passed away when I was thirty-three.
I wrote the poem from memories from 1963 and 1964. Those years I lived in Seguin, Texas. He lived on the old Pruitt Place between Leesville and Nixon, Texas in Gonzales County.
As a fifth and sixth grader, I spent many weekends and holidays with him during those wonder years. The poem is of memories of fishing with him and when I asked him about Jesus walking on the water. He asked where I heard the story. I told him Sunday school. He then retold me the story saying he first heard it attending church as a boy.
I had a wonderful grandfather.
My Grandfather and Me
We would walk to the stock tank
My grandfather and me
There I learned to bait a hook
In the cool shade of the trees
Sometimes in the little boat
Rowing close to an earthen dam
He would retell of Jesus walking on the water
A story he’d learned in church when just a lad
He would take a dip of Garrett Snuff
Addicted to the nicotine
While I watched my cane pole’s cork float
When it bobbed, I tugged the line, and let out a scream
In my homemade feed sack shirt
Blue jeans rolled up nearly to my knees
He was always in his khakis
A red bandanna used to catch his sneeze
Memories of those early years
Are as fresh as yesterday
Someday we will meet in Glory
Again he will show me the way.
Remembering the events of my seventh-grade year at Ben Milam School at Biggs Air Force Base in El Paso, Texas inspired this poem.
On the six o’clock evening news one night the announcer did a story that the actor Johnny Crawford from the hit television show “The Rifleman” had been drafted. He had reported to Fort Bliss, Texas for United States Army Basic Training.
The events in the poem took place a few weeks later when our physical education class was on the playground, and United States Army basic trainees were marching down the adjacent dirt road. I still remember this event like it was yesterday.
Is Johnny Crawford from “The Rifleman” in Your Company?
We pressed our faces up against the chain linked fence.
We were supposed to be playing soccer during physical education class.
But we ran toward the chained linked fence that separated our schoolyard from the dirt road.
We stared at the young soldiers marching to training.
They looked so army soldier in their fatigues, helmets and carried their rifles at right shoulder arms.
They appeared like a scene out of “Combat” that we watched each week on our televisions.
While barely just four or five years older than us, they looked all grown up.
A cute seventh-grade girl got up her courage and yelled,
“Is Johnny Crawford from ‘The Rifleman’ in your company?”
There had been a news story of Johnny Crawford’s arrival at Fort Bliss for his basic training.
A kind three stripe sergeant responded, “No miss, he’s in a different training company.”
“You boys are going to Vietnam after basic?” asked the P.E. coach who had walked over and joined us.
“Maybe so, but first we got to survive this!” said a smiling boyish faced trainee.
“Quiet in the ranks!” screamed the drill sergeant.
The dust was getting thicker as the soldiers continued marching.
Most of the seventeen and eighteen-year-old troopers looked at the lovely thirteen years old blonde girl.
Some were thinking of their younger sisters back home,
Some were thinking the thoughts seventeen and eighteen years old young men have when seeing a pretty, young teenage girl, and
Some were wondering if they would live long enough to fall in love, marry, and ever have a daughter of their own.
Written by Jimmie Aaron Kepler
Originally published on http://www.johnnycrawford.com, February 2008. Photo credits: Photo of Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark, from the television program “The Rifleman.” This work is in the public domain in that it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.
Jimmie Aaron Kepler is a novelist, poet, book reviewer, and award-winning short story writer. His work has appeared in over twenty venues, including Bewildering Stories and Beyond Imagination. When not writing each morning at his favorite coffee house, he supports his writing, reading, and book reviewing habit working as an IT application support analyst. He is a former Captain in the US Army. His blog Kepler’s Book Reviews was named a 100 best blogs for history buffs. You can visit him at http://www.jimmiekepler.com.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
by Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and they lived together first in the United States and then England, having two children together: Frieda and Nicholas. Following a long struggle with depression and a marital separation, Plath committed suicide in 1963. Controversy continues to surround the events of her life and death, as well as her writing and legacy.
Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her two published collections: The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel. In 1982, she became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously, for The Collected Poems. She also wrote The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death.
Thanksgiving is a magical time
With miracles often ignored
Families and friends somehow
Find a way to meet, mingle and eat
Often with more food leftover
Than when they began.
Now the preparation is the amazing feat
Sometimes the magic is passed down
From grandmother to daughter to granddaughter
And sometimes the spells come out of book
That give the formulas on how to cook
With a pinch of this and a sprinkle of that
As the hand waves adding a dash of love
Leftover cornbread and muffins
Amazingly get changed to stuffing
How does she turn the cranberries to sauce?
Have you ever noticed how grandma and mother
Turn a pumpkin into a pie?
A pale turkey transformed into a glowing bronzed treat
Candied yams mysteriously get the marshmallows to melt
And somehow mother mixes gingerbread
and out comes a humanoid shape
With stubby feet and no fingers
But with a vanilla icing smiley face
And icing hair, shirt cuffs, and shoes
With shirt buttons of
Gum drops, icing, or raisins.
Yes the wizards of Thanksgiving
Are the magical mothers who cook.
“Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it. And that is to stop. You’ve got to stop what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, and what you’re expecting and just be there for the poem for however long it take.” — W.S. Merwin.
William Stanley Merwin (New York City, September 30, 1927) is an American poet, credited with over 30 books of poetry, translation and prose. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin’s unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, Merwin’s writing influence derived from his interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in Hawaii, he writes prolifically and is dedicated to the restoration of the islands’ rainforests.
Merwin has received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (in both 1971 and 2009) and the Tanning Prize, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets, as well as the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 2010, the Library of Congress named Merwin the seventeenth United States Poet Laureate to replace the outgoing Kay Ryan.
Remembering the events of my seventh-grade year at Ben Milam School at Biggs Air Force Base in El Paso, Texas inspired this poem.
