Songs Sacred and Profane - New and Selected Poems: Greenside up and Let It All Hang Out: Greenside up and Let It All Hang Out

By Laurence W. Thomas

Songs Sacred and Profane is a selection from Thomas' four other books and eight chapbooks plus many poems that have not appeared in book form. This volume contains, in fact, two quite different books published as one. "Greenside Up", written almost entirely looking into his garden, is made up of bucolic works which observe nature and a quiet life. They are well mannered, introspective, and show the poet's sensitivity to language and his world. "Let It All Hang Out" lets loose with poems that show Thomas' acerbic wit at times, his wry approach to human foibles, and his personal take on religion coupled with various aspects of love, mutability, and mortality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 16, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469109565

Laurence W. Thomas

After years of teaching English in Uganda, Costa Rica, Saudi Arabia, Michigan and Florida, Laurence W. Thomas returned to his native Michigan to concentrate on writing poetry and fiction and giving lectures--in Michigan and Arkansas. This fifth book follows one of humorous poems and sketches, and another done in collaboration with an artist who created collages to accompany the poems. Thomas' work is marked by his wry wit, sensitive observation, and employing a variety of styles and forms that is not experimental since all poetry is experimental.

Book preview

SONGS

SACRED AND

PROFANE

NEW AND SELECTED POEMS

GREENSIDE UP

&

LET IT ALL HANG OUT

Laurence W. Thomas

Copyright © by Laurence W. Thomas.

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

1-888-7-XLIBRIS

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

GREENSIDE UP—

An Introduction

SPRING

SPRING

WAKING UP

MORNING

READING THE DAY

EARLY SPRING

BIRD FEEDER

MONDAY MORNING

WINTERKILL

HARBINGERS

EL SEMBRADOR

THE COMING OF SPRING

FEEDING THE SQUIRREL

VIOLETS

CROCUS

TEMPTING, ON THE EDGE OF SPRING

CROWS KNOW

TRIMMING THE HEDGE

A GOOD YEAR FOR TULIPS

SUMMER

SUMMER

TRANQUILITY

SERMON

COLORS

GARDENS

REFLECTION

SPRAYING POISON IVY

AT WORK

HAWKS

SMALL CATS

A WALK IN THE GARDEN

INJURED JAY

INNATE

GROUNDHOGS’ DAY

OPOSSUM

FROM THE GARDEN

ADVISORY

AFTER THE CRASH

THE CARDINALS

WAITING FOR THE MAIL

LOVE POEM

AUTUMN

AUTUMN

HOLDING TO SEASONS

INDIAN PIPES

AFTERNOON

TRANSACTION

THE LOVERS

THE RAKER

THE FALL

CANADA GEESE

THE SHORTENING OF DAYS

WINTER

WINTER

LULLABY

NIGHTFALL

EYES OF NIGHT

PATIO POEM

OVERNIGHT GUESTS

LUNAR PELVIC RAT SONG

THINGS THAT GO BUMP

SILENCE

ONLY THE EVERGREENS

SNOWMAN

GARDEN IN WINTER

POWER OUTAGE

THE COMING OF BLIZZARDS

THANKSGIVING

SNOWSTORM

A LIFE IN THE DAY—The Canonical Hours

LET IT ALL HANG OUT—

A Brief Word

THE ANNUNCIATION

BOOTING UP

MAKE MUCH OF MOMENTS

PRAYER IN PEACETIME

PYRAMID

BECOMING A FISH

THREE PICTURES OF MOTHER

TRAIN POEM

WERE IT NOT FOR DEATH

HOLIDAYS

PRESENT PARTICIPLES

GOING FOR THE CHINESE

PURGE

DO IT

THE UPS STRIKE

THEY MUST CONSPIRE

ABORTION

PAST PARTICIPLES

ON THE TRAIN TO ALEXANDRIA

JUST DESERT—A Ballad for Auden

SHOPPING AT THE PASS

TO C. K. WILLIAMS

AMIDE PERSONNE

LOSING SIGHT OF THE ACROPOLIS

OBITUARY

RUINS AT DIRIYAH*

FIVE BAGATELLES

INFINITIVES

CATASTROPHE

BEING DRIVEN TO HOSPITAL AFTER

AN OVERDOSE

TO GIVE THE LIE

WHAT CAN NEVER TOUCH ME

GERUNDS

TAUGHT BY EXAMPLE

EXCEPTIONS

BODY AND SOUL

GIVETH AND TAKETH

FIVE GHAZALS OF ACCOMMODATION

THE ONE FRUITCAKE MAKES THE

ROUNDS

I THINK OF BELLEVILLE

REMEMBERING

RELEARNING

HAPPINESS IS A BLACK JEWISH

LESBIAN HOOKER

CONDOMINIA

PORTRAIT AT AN INDETERMINATE

AGE

YOU ARE HERE

SONG CYCLE

PARTING

EPITHALAMIUM

THRENODY

FINAL VICTORY

SILLY

1.

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY

AFTER RAIN

A VISIT FROM ST. NICK

FOR THE UNGRATEFUL

IF YOU WERE TO DIE

BEFORE YOU HAD WRAPPED THE

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

PROWLERS

AGING

AUTUMN

BURYING THE DEAD

A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

EULOGY

GREENSIDE UP—

An Introduction

When my parents built the house where I now live, the street sign said Greenside Avenue which sounded too urban, so they began calling it Greenside Road. Indeed, they could remember when the street wasn’t paved and had no sewer connection. By the time I returned from teaching overseas and moved in, the area had undergone improvements, and Avenue might have been apt, but I began calling it Greenside Up, after the old joke about the laborers who were laying sod. The Post Office at one time sent me a list of the names they recognize in a feeble attempt to rectify my misnomer, but it was too late; I had been using Greenside Up for ten years by then and the name had stuck. Maybe that’s why the postal rates keep getting hiked.

The street is a quiet one, with trees meeting overhead like cathedral arches, a golf course across from our house, and more people jogging or walking their dogs and children than traffic. We bought the lot next door and allowed it to grow wild with new trees vying with older ones, thickets of raspberries and wild roses, and a tumult of weeds, of which I control only the burdock, nettles, and poison ivy. Not unrelated to this are the numbers of ground- hogs, raccoons, opossums, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and of course, hundreds of birds who have overcome their natural reticence to visit my patio which I replenish daily with table scraps, seeds, and suet. They accept the proximity of man and my (strictly indoor) cat, their supposed enemies, in order to benefit from easy pickings. I, in turn, have the satisfaction of celebrating my one- ness with nature.

So many poems grew out of puttering around in the garden

during the growing season or looking out at it through the kitchen window where I often write, that I began to wonder if would ever write anything other than poems deriving from life on Greenside Up.

unconsciously, or at least unplanned, a strain that runs through much of my work—the unity of man and nature over- simplifies it—fell into focus as these poems evolved. They dwell more on harmony than on what happens when man challenges nature, and they become a personal credo supplanting whatever organized religions have tried to tempt me into through their inexplicable entanglements. The cycles of the seasons inform more convincingly, and are more dependable, than the inventions of theologians based on opinions and premises I have no way of verifying and which present unsubstantiated promises as fact. These are too easy to believe, impossible to prove, and become crutches assumed by those looking for convenient explanations. My prayer is not to move an ill-defined and abstract god to do my