The Groom Danced for His Bride

By Dorothea Condry-Paulk

For those who love poetry, this book is a treasure. The poems stretch your heart and your mind. Each one you read will make you eager to read the next. And when you finish the book, you will want to start over and read it all again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453544297

Dorothea Condry-Paulk

Dorothea Paulks live in Oklahoma where she manages her farm, writes and paints. Retirement from career in teaching language arts and in hospital nursing freed time to write. She has published five books at Xlibris since retiring. Sulphur Matches is her fourth novel and her first juvenile book. Adapted from the adult novel, courtesy of Andrew Carnegie, it focuses on the six-year-old Crissy instead of adult characters. She has been writing and publishing since the late sixties: clapbooks, shortstories, articles and one play which Pueblo Press published in 1980. She received her MA in writing from UCO in 1974.

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Copyright © 2010 by Dorothea Condry-Paulk.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010910871

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4535-4428-0

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4535-4427-3

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4535-4429-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

77103

Contents

NATURE

A Flock of Geese

A Painting

An Illusion

Being

Breaking Water

Canyons

Connubial Rites

Day Song

Earth

Ginger Cookie Moods

Happiness

In the Heart of Winter

Making It

Moonflowers

Now

Pollination

Prairie Pups

Preparation for the Ghost Dance of 1870

Rain

Rainbows

Red-Earth Splendor

Silences

Song of Winter

Still Waters

Summer in the Country

Survival

Tenure

The Calving

The Connection

The Garden

The Jonquil

The Latter Days

The River of Turtles

The Rose

The Sky Changes Least of All

Wheat Harvest

When God Made Summer

Winning and Losing

Winter

MISCELLANEOUS

A Difference

A Negative Calculation

A Notice on the Wall

Active; Passive

Adaptation’s Demise

Balloons

Birth

Bittersweets

Blue Berries

Cat Walk

Christmas

Christmas Eve, 1978

Conductors

Cruising

Death Defeated

Diplomacy

Ellen

Facism Disguised

Flying

From Eight to Five

Green Seedings

I Want that Job

Inside the Prayer Tepee

Kiss-s-s-s-s-s

*Le Resistance

Man Hater

May Coleridge Rest in Peace

Means and Ends, etc . . . .

Memory

Minister Wanted

Night Visions

Of Sheep and Goats

On the Top and Flying

Paula

Plautus

Pronoun Problem

Quiet Expectations

Rejection Solution

Routes

See the Pink Crabs

Similarities; Differences

Strike Up the Band

Structured Religion

Ten Definitions for Freedom

The Alchemist

The Black and White Glossy

The Boy

The Crowning of Debi

The Cutter; the Prophet

The Groom Danced for his Bride

The Latter Days

The Line

The March of Morning Star

The Mornings of My Daughters’ Births

The Old Minneapolis Moline

The Other Woman in the Office

The Rary at the Xerox

The Second Coming

Three Brows

Three by Four’s

Times Change

Tinsel and Taxes

Turla Pat

Voltage Ventures

Whang Pain

OBSERVATIONS

An Argument with a Friend named Ruth

Animation

Are You a Fast-Food God?

Awareness

Bar the Door

Beauty

Becoming at the Company

Between Fear and Despair There’s Inertia

Childhood

Communion

Corporate Security

Dilly Dollies

Down the Dusty Road

Down the Gold Coast

Eagle Run

East

Enough

Forgiveness

Formal Education

Forty

Fulfillment

Futility

Gifts

Heroes

Hierarchies

Hope

How the White Man Lost His Eyes

Integrated Circuits

Joy

Loose Virtue

My Hope

New Leather

New Life

Nothing Wants an Emptiness

Of Young Men and Daffodils

Options

Pleasing Things

Political Schizophrenia

Power

Pride

*Qadim

Racial Balance

Rage

Reunion

Sacrament

The Chaos

The Labor Room

The Technical Viewpoint

The Window

The Yankees and the Dodgers

Voyages

War

When Joy is Loud

ABOUT PLACES

An Appropriate Response

An Arkansas Legend

At Nablos in Old Samaria

At Petra

Blessed are the Red Poppies

Crossing on the Ferry

From Jerusalem

Gabriel’s Moving Out

Galilee

In the BMO

In the Garden

Masada

Only Land Lasts

Padre Island

Rome

Santa Fe

Shiloh

Stalking Up the Wind to Chicago

The Blessed Land

The Catacombs

The Gypsies

The Jordan River

The Legend of Platt National Park

The Market

The Oklahoma Land Saga, and Others

The Plains of Jezreel

The Sign

The Single-tree

The Wailing Wall

Thoughts About Minnesota

War Zone

ROMANCE

A Dream I Dreamed

An Honest Video

Beginnings

Conception

Cristabel—Concluded

DJD Loves PWK

Fantasies

Joy

My Lover

Of Geese and Ganders

Prophecy

Remember

Sadie Hawkins Sez

Saturday Night Readings

The Aha!

The Palmist

Through the Veil

Touching

Tourists and Other Strangers

Veiled Feeling

Video Wife

When Hymens Tear

Dedicated to my sister, Barbara

whose unconditional affection

and encouragement fostered

this manuscript of poetry and prose.

My thanks to my granddaughter, Katie Marie Carnott,

for preparing this manuscript and for her encouragement.

NATURE

A Flock of Geese

Anticipation choruses

in the vibratos of

irrepressible geese

squawking about spring,

diligent for some

harvest past their

relentless effort of

flight past nights of

cloud-faced moon.

Like Balboa or William Byrd,

they go to new territory.

Braggarts, every one,

they advertise their

lack of symbiosis.

A Painting

My mind is water-color steeped

in globs of autumn-orange,

like neon-mirrored rain-wet streets,

colors spiral, warm.

When I look upon the sheet,

there’s motion everywhere.

Thus as I do the usual,

there’s nothing usual there.

An Illusion

Autumn . . . . nature’s Jezebel

in painted face and crimson hair;

eyes mesmerized . . . . alas, glance down

to wrinkling, crinkling, leaves turned brown.

Being

Vine of Green, alive and

spilling fire of trumpet blossoms

burning orange; triumphant honey

blood to sword-beaked Hummingbirds

that leave when Winter’s cold seals

life inside its envelope.

Recover!

Break out spring-green!

Sprout flames from thicker vines!

Root deeper; quiver with life.

Come nod to the Hummingbirds!

Open!

Live in the Light!

Be!

While trumpet vines still grow.

Breaking Water

The pond is frozen;

the cattle thirst.

I walk down the

glistening slope,

an ax in hand and

the frozen clack

of branches near.

Overhead, the caw,

of hungry crows

chorus their performance

for the Herefords who

munch fresh hay.

I strike and strike again

until ice mosaics seep

sienna water six handles

long and wide as my reach.

Walking back to the truck,

I’m aware of the cold.

It’s after my fingers;

cutting through my boots

while the world melts

red and white under sun.

This light-transformed place

grows russet up the snow in

clods of earth; in rock—

vital; earthy as an Indian

half-breed smelling spring.

The vibration of new life

under my feet are surely the

herds of distant buffalo.

Canyons

Canyons are cut by water,

by earthquake; by man.

Wild fruits grow there;

wasps buzz over blooms

carpeting its sides and

tangling with poison oak

and ivy like leeching women

and gullible men.

In early fall, I look for

wood for the stove; sample

possum grapes while small

animals scurry: squirrels

and rabbits; raccoons too.

Polk berries are red now;

the leaf-rich banks covered

with fauna; deer and cat

marks scar the trees, while

coyote pups aren’t far, ever.

This wounded earth spawns plant

and animals—fish too—

a womb for life or death.

Sick calves come here to wait

for the bobcat’s teeth;

and young heifers, in their fear,

come here to calve, but only once.

I’m here to remind myself

that the wound you gave me

will heal in interesting and

extraordinary ways like these.

Consider the Grand Canyon.

Though your efforts to harm

seem miniscule by comparison,

its grandeur is the Soul’s defense.

Connubial Rites

The sun’s

a ball

of fire

falling

where earth

and sky

kiss.

And mists

from heaven

rise

and fall

to curtain

them

‘til morning.

Day Song

The great gold gift, God’s metronome,

awakes the green while flowers yawn

and lift their heads to greet with song,

the morning . . . . day’s begun.

Thus Dawn’s blushing, God-kissed face

bursts into Day, sweet child of grace,

to make upon the earth her place

before contender ends