Poetry Friday - The RoundUp

Isn’t it fabulous that every week, close to 50 people stop whatever they’re doing in their so busy lives and think, consider, research, write, find and compile all these wonderful poems and stories?

I think it’s astounding and I think each of you amazing contributors are making the world a better place one poem at a time. I’m so thankful for you all. You’ve opened up the window on my world and made it a richer, more colorful tapestry. Here’s to you all and I hope you have a wonderful holiday season filled with joy and hope.

I thought I'd do a nonsense poem as a round-up, like I did last time I hosted, but your poems wanted their own way and it became a story of two friends who look to each other when illness strikes. It's still a little nonsensical thought.

This epistolary round-up is dedicated to a friend that is far away. I'm thinking of you and hope I can be as good a friend as Tom.

Holiday Round-up

Hey Charley, writes Tom
Did ya know that each night a child is born is a holy night,
Which fills the poet’s happy soul while
frogs dream the winter away?

Charley writes back that he's had the chest pains for weeks,
Why do we bother with the rest of the day?
Come out and greet with me
the moment the dark begins.

Tom writes back to Charley.
The bird on the terrace has his own name in French, but I don't
know it.
Gull and pull away from the dark man!
Eat pride with your doggerel and lace it with rum.

Communing with nature onthe night before Christmas, Charley's memories
of Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea.
The sea said, see i will comfort you.

His house is in the village though, a long walk from the sea.
He liked wolves and eagles and grizzly bears
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
a strange sight to the sunbathers who had never seen
the junipers shagged with ice.

Sleeping in snatches, Tom worries about his friend
He wakes, gets up and sits down
to write some cards…
thinking, I will turn it around.

Charley is thinking too.
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on
Searching through the darkness,
his thoughts sped through the snow, then under a river...

Tom wrote, fight the good fight!
One must have a mind of winter
Walking into the face of wind,
Praise be to the distant sister sun
All just to say, you are my friend.

Charley laughs, his first in weeks
at the line from Tom that says,
Hate to take the castor-ile they give for bellyache!

Tom thinks
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
I'd use them to
Take up the strain that wings it's way,
You have to hold him up.


The wind howls, hisses, and but stops to howl more loud
The longest night and the shortest day.
Tough Boy Sonatas, Charley thinks
The Christmas of my life.

Something I just noticed, said Tom
The tropical moon gave the city a glow,
Things grew brighter, more distinct, themselves.
Yes, your throat is froggy,
But it's better than it was.

Your friendship did it, said Charley
the swirling curves of spiraled space and time
with feasting and good cheer
and the Tamalitos de Cambray!