Small town sounds
Unlocked doors
Not that many cars.
Main Street grocery store
Nickel candy bars.
Church Street,
“Sunday shoes”,
Parents stood outside and smoked,
Kids caught with cigarettes
Would have allowances revoked.
Corn Growers
Push mowers
Friday football games.
Everybody, Everywhere,
Knew everybody’s name.
Summer shouts
Paper routes
Cub Scouts once a week
Boys and girls in sixth grade
Dancing cheek to cheek.
No shirts
Blue jeans
Walking through the beans
Witches, ghosts and scary things
Every Halloween
Greased pigs
Little League
Swimming lessons in the lake
Talking back to teachers
Was a BIG mistake!
Teachers had hard paddles that
They were not afraid to use
Parents told them,
“Go ahead.”
And they did not refuse.
Bicycles everywhere
Pocket knives
Truth or Dare
Water balloons,
Kids Cartoons
Fishing in the creek
Not it
Gravel pit
Games of Hide and Seek
Bible School
Golden Rule
Jesus Loved Me This I Know
Several generations
Watching children grow.
Laying on a blanket
Watching shooting stars
Teachers went two towns away
When they went to bars.
Home grown tomatoes
Juicy burgers nice and thick
Eating home-made ice cream
Until all of us were sick.
Nine o’clock bedtimes
The nights were very still
I still hear the small town sounds
I guess I always will.
PwL 5/5/15

You may have thought I was pretentious
A little crazy, lost my senses
Can’t believe that I confided
Everything, but I’ve decided
There was nothing else that I could do that night.
And I’d do it all again.

Won’t lose sleep wonderin’ if I’m wrong
I’ve made mistakes some – now and then
But I’m telling you I love you,
And I’d do it all again.

You got to know the whole thing scared me
Like someone else, inside just dared me
My resolve began to weaken
And my mouth just started speakin’
Told you more than I had right to
You were hard to say good night to
And I’d do it all again

Won’t lose sleep wonderin’ if I’m wrong
I’ve made mistakes some – now and then
But I’m telling you I love you,
And I’d do it all again.

Sometimes now I lay back and listen,
Then my eyes tear up and glisten
I’m convinced that you have shown me
You want to love me not to own me
And you make me much more happy
Than I have a right to be
And I’d do it all again.

So I won’t lose sleep wonderin’ if I’m wrong
I’ve made mistakes some – now and then
But I’m telling you I love you,
And I’ll do it all again.

When we think back to that kiss
Hoping it would lead to this
I guess that we both learned a lesson
That I’m glad we didn’t miss
Spending days and nights together
There’s no question as to whether
We’d do it all again.
And we’d do it all again.

We can’t lose sleep wonderin’ if we’re wrong
We’ve made mistakes some – now and then
But we know we love each other
And we’d do it all again.
You know we’d do it all again.
PwL 2006

Part 4*
When we last left poor Agnes
In her attic all alone
She couldn’t find her way back down,
And she had no telephone.
No light switch and no stairway
She couldn’t find the hall
The elevator disappeared
(It had sunk into the floor)
And to make her situation worse,
She couldn’t find the door!

But Agnes McDuff was pretty tough;
She didn’t mess around
She thought of stuff that she could use
To help her get back down.

First she lit the candlesticks
So she would have some light -
For an attic with no window
Is black as darkest night.

With candlelight, she now could see;
She dumped the clothes from all the boxes,
Put the boxes on the table,
Next she stacked the wooden blocks.
She found some nails and a hammer
In her Grandma’s toolbox.
She nailed it all together
And on top she nailed the chairs
Now Agnes had a set of crazy, crooked
Homemade stairs!
Agnes went back to the toolbox,
She saw a saw was there,
She carried it very carefully
As she climbed the crazy stair.

Now you might have a feeling
Of what she was going to do
Yes, she climbed up to the ceiling, and
Used the saw to cut right through!

She climbed back down and looked around
Found the rubber bands and string
Added several woolen socks
And made a giant sling!

She rummaged through the dumped out clothes
Found a wedding dress and suit
And with the needle and the spool of thread
Made a great big parachute!

She hooked the parachute to the bicycle
(The one without a spoke)
And tied the back wheel to the tuba
And that was NOT a joke.

The tuba was quite heavy
So it kept the bike at rest
Once again climbed up the crazy stair
And performed the final test.

She nailed both ends of the slingshot
Around the opening she’d sawn
Hooked the sling around the bicycle
Moved the stair, and then got on.

Somehow the clock was working!
It was ringing Three, Two, One
And just as Agnes cut the tie she thought
Boy! This could be FUN!

The slingshot worked!*
Shot Agnes out, on the bike, way up into the sky,
And she looked around in wonder thought,
Boy!  I’ve never been this high!

She went up a mile or so
Before she dared look down
She saw the long suspension bridge
And the other parts of town.
She saw the entrance to the tunnel
(The rest was under ground)
She saw the roundhouse and the avenue
The park and then the lake
Finally, she saw her house
There was no mistake!

So she deployed the parachute
And gently she descended
And this is where the story
Of Agnes Attic should have ended.

She walked up to the doorway
Turned the handle, now you see?
The door was locked from the inside,
Agnes McDuff forgot the key!
PwL  May 4, 2015

It would be easier for me to track a dinosaur through time;
To solve the evolution mystery, or make the dictionary rhyme.
To change the course of history would be easier to do
Than for me to spend a single day
Without a thought of you.

It would be easier for me to make the stars all disappear;
To make a blind man see your face, or make a deaf man hear.
To make the world stop fighting would be easier to do
Than for me to spend a day without
A single thought of you.

A single thought of you?
I only wish that it were true,
But I think of you a thousand times a day.
In my heart I hope that you
Are sometimes thinking of me too,
And I never want, won’t ever want, these thoughts to go away.

It would be easier for me to turn a mountain into sand;
To turn a desert into ocean, or an ocean into land.
To make the earth stop turning would be easier to do
Than for me to spend a day without
A single thought of you.

A single thought of you?
I only wish that it were true,
But I think of you a thousand times a day.
In my heart I hope that you
Are always thinking of me too,
And I never want, won’t ever want, these thoughts to go away.

If our lives were only easy, we would both know what to say,
Know when to hold each other closer and know when to push away.
To live with this emotion is no easy thing to do
And I'll never spend another day
Without a thought of you.
And in my heart I hope that you
Are always thinking of me too,
And I never want, won’t ever want, these thoughts to go away.

pwl 2006

I'll wait for you forever
till stars forget to shine,
and oceans become puddles,
words no longer rhyme

Till deserts turn to gardens
where flowers go to bloom,
the grass is red, the skies are green,
the dawn brings out the moon

Till rain is something very dry
and butterflies drive trucks,
when every pond is chocolate sauce
with candy coated ducks

Till basements have a penthouse view
with windows three floors high
and stairways are a place to swim
no matter how you fly

Till mountains are a level path
that you will go to walk
and silence now becomes a way
for every one to talk

Till everything we've ever known
is gone and disappeared
The world does end, there's nothing more
just like we always feared

Till broken hearts are happy,
tears a welcome site
Night comes at the break of day
and daytime looks like night

I'll wait for you forever
until the end of time
It matters not how long it takes
if I can call you mine

Poet:  Good Morning Darling!  Can you hear the birds?  The sun is creeping up, too beautiful for words!

Accountant:  It’s 54 degrees with a high of 72 predicted.  You won’t need a coat.

Poet: Ah, the warmth of afternoon sun, won’t our picnic today be fun?

Accountant:  We should leave by 10:30.  I have to get gas.  Have you packed our lunch?

Poet:  I have chicken salad for our lunch, potato chips to add some crunch, I baked the cookies that you liked last time, and bought a bottle of your favorite wine!

Accountant:  I set the GPS.  We should get there right at 11:15.  Do you have a blanket?

Poet:  Yes, a blanket to lay upon the ground, at the edge of the woods that we once found, while lost upon a country road, turned the fortune of our day around!

Accountant:  I charged my cell phone and the ball game starts at 1:20.   A win puts us in first place.  Are you sure we’ll have cell reception?

Poet: Ah, but I will read you poetry about the love I have for thee, leave the city’s crowds and noise behind, to all else but ourselves be blind.

Accountant:  Honey, why are you talking like that?

Poet:  I just joined Hello Poetry, now all the world’s a verse to me, to read and share with HP friends, ecstatic when a poem trends!

Accountant: Yeah, is that what you showed me the other day?  Looked to me like you guys all ‘like’ each other’s poems, and 95% of the people that read yours don’t even like them.

Poet: Really?  (holding back tears)

Accountant: That’s what I calculated.  How many of those cookies are you bringing anyway?

Poet:  I have a dozen, but I can bake more.

Accountant: Nah, 12 is plenty, and by the way, Baby, I just love your poetry, it’s filled with creativity, each word picked out is absolute, with premise that I can’t dispute, I guess one more thing I should say: I’d like it more if it would pay!
PwL May 3, 2015

Do you miss me? Want to
Kiss me?  Want to hold me
Very tight?
Are you lonely, want me
Only.  Want to love me thru
The night?
Will you stay true if I
Love you? Will you be mine for
Many years?
Will we ever be together? Will
Our laughter dry
The tears?
Will you smile and say you
Love me? In the morning
and the night?
Will your smile be the
Sunshine that makes the world
All right?
If you answer that you want to
And you want to
Hold my hand.
Then you've given me a purpose
I think you will
Understand.
I am yours for Now and
Ever.  I am yours in
Heart and Soul.
I am yours from any distance,
You're the one that
Makes me whole.
pwL 2006