Poems by an Ozark Logger

By Lenzie Myers

Ive been writing poems for better than fifty years. Like other folks, Iv had my ups and downs. For some reason, when I get something on my mind, good or bad, it stays there for a while..I found that if I wrote it down in the best and fewest words possible, it helped me to get it off my mind. The result was a poem.

Ive written poems and thrown them away or lost them. Ive kept some of them for fifty years or more. In thie book is maybe one in four of all Ive ever written in my life.

Its my hope that from time someone will read one of my poems and say, Ah yeah. Ive been there. Done that. or maybe, Well, I never thought about it like that.

If that should happen to you, Id appreciate it if youd drop me a line to: Lenzie Myers

P.O. Box 22 Zalma, Missouri 63787 and tell me or lenzie [e-mail]

P.S.Dont let the name Lenzie fool you. When I was a baby thats name was given only to little boy babies. So youll find me male and not female as Ive often been mislabeled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781462069996

Lenzie Myers

Lenzie Myers, sitting on top of the log, was born Dec. 10, 1930, exactly one hundred years after Emily Dickinson. He graduated from Myerx Grade School in Bollinger County, Missouri, an old fashioned one room school which had a yearly attendance from five to thirteen students. Then the graduated form Zalma High School in 1949. The graduating class that year was in the low twenties. After spending a tour of duty with the Marines, a year of it in Korea, he graduated from Oakland City College in Indiana. The bulk of his life was spent as a farmer, a logger, a minister and a teacher.

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Copyright © 2013 by Lenzie Myers.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-6997-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-6998-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-6999-6 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 03/15/2013

May 10, 2011

To:

My Wild Virginia Rose,

Without you there would have been no book of poetry,

and there would have been no novels.

Thanks.

Lenzie

P.S.

Stay healthy.

Stay happy,

And keep on goin’ like Hell.

I n these rugged hills I’ve spent my days

And learned from nature in her wondrous ways,

But the greatest lesson by any means

Is the ultimate end of man and his dreams.

For it was to these hills a pioneer came

And built his house on a homestead claim.

The soil was thin on the land he got,

But the dreams he dreamed were a healthy lot.

Where the two of them once called their home,

Is now a place for the deer to roam.

Though Father Time has worked fifty years

There is still a trace of their hopes and fears:

The tangled mass where their orchard stood,

The shallow well dug the best he could,

The worn out plow with the busted beam,

These are just the bones of a dream.

But those bones can speak and they spoke to me

Of things that have been and what shall be.

For I’ve felt the spirit of the man and his mate

As they welcomed me through their rotted down gate.

Then I sat down and talked a while

And admired their courage with a knowing smile.

I heard their dreams of a former day

As I listened to the children laugh and play.

I’ve seen it there a dozen times at least,

That upright stone that’s facing east.

I know the words there under the moss

Our Baby Boy and I’ve felt their loss.

Then I must leave for I can’t stay.

I have a part to play on the stage today.

But as I leave how well I know

That this is the way men and dreams all go.

No need to worry or even feel blue

For the old must always make way make way for the new.

The next man must have plenty of space

To build his dreams in my deserted place.

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M y lovely special lady

Would you share the evening breeze?

We shall walk beside the river

Beneath the towering maple trees.

There’s a place I’d like to show