Reid's Short Read's: Glimpses of Fun and Fear

By Alex S. Reid

Writing has always been my passion.
Throughout my life, these stories and poems have given me the chance to express
my thoughts and feelings.
Some were submitted to publishers, but rejected.
Many stayed for years in my desk drawer, collecting dust.
I have always believed they were worth reading.
Now in retirement, and with Xlibris help, this is my chance to publish.
If they are as much fun to read, as they were to write, its a win-win.
This book gives my family and friends the chance to read them. In this way they share some of my lifes experiences.
The names of places and characters have all been changed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 24, 2009
• ISBN: 9781503522435

Alex S. Reid

Alex grew up in England, married in 1962, then moved to the USA. He and his wife Mary of 52 years raised three children. An engineer, he worked designing and manufacturing computers, copiers, and medical equipment. Though short story writing was always of interest, it wasn’t until retirement that he found time to publish. With the publication of this, his second book, his children and grandchildren can now read and better understand what makes this old guy tick.

Book preview

Reid’s Short Reads

Glimpses of Fun and Fear

Poems and Short Stories

Alex S. Reid

Copyright © 2009 by Alex S. Reid.

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 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 11/25/2014

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Poems

A Scotsman Remembers

Just A Bone

Stay

My Boss

Night Hunter

Back Talk

Cold

Old Boot

Forest Fire

Wind Chimes

The Heavens

My Scotland, You’ve Changed

Invisible Man

Westward

I Keep Right On

Mary

Drafted

Short Stories

Uncle Henry

You Wouldn’t Hardly Believe It

Man in the Rain

Pasta

A Stake in the Sun

Tealeaves and Lavender

The Trouble With Bacon

A Place in the Country

Memories

Riding the Bus

When the Dogs Began Barking

Granddad’s War

Hunter

The Fence

Finding My Father

Sunday Afternoon

Home Again

My Trowel

Hotdog

A Walk In The Woods

Dance Hall

1933

Cooling Off

A Visit Home

Two and Two

Five-Mile Race

Caught Anything Mister?

Hitchhiker

Fronds

Quitting

Goodbye Mom

Dad’s Aussie Friend

A Hot Summer Night.

Our Sodus, N.Y., Cancer Support Group.

Brits in the Blitz

Student Teacher

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A Scotsman Remembers

Scotland still, for you, I’m yearning

Your mountain mists within me burning.

Bagpipes pace my very walking,

My birthplace shapes my way of talking.

Mountains hanging from the skies.

Swirling clouds where eagle cries.

Deep ferns and heather covered hills.

The sights and sounds are vivid still.

Our grey stone church with ivy clinging.

The gentle sound of choirboys singing.

Leaning gravestones, wild flowers peeping.

Late for church, a child comes creeping.

Pipe bands marching, kilts a swinging.

Through lashing rain, their faces stinging.

Drum major, proud his jaw out jutting,

Baton hurling, white boots strutting.

Unseen church with soft bells tolling,

Through the mist, as I was strolling,

On hills of heather, with far sheep bleating.

These memories are well worth keeping.

Casting a fly, for trout so wily.

Watching the sun slip down the valley.

Deer feeding, unafraid in the glen.

Life was oh so simple then.

Mist cloaked castles, old walls crumbling.

Steam trains chugging, coal trucks rumbling.

Windswept cliff tops, pine trees leaning,

The sky alive with seagulls screaming.

At night along the beach, while strolling,

Salt spray from the white waves rolling,

Against the harbor, breakers crashing,

Beyond the point, the lighthouse flashing.

Salmon leaping upstream, splashing.

Wild geese in the marshes thrashing.

These sights and sounds I’ll keep forever,

Though many years, as fresh as ever.

Homework Assignment.

Just a Bone

Write a free verse poem describing something empty. An empty room, empty box, or an empty anything. Make it interesting.

Just A Bone

A large bone, alive with flies, lay in the sawdust, in that empty lion’s cage.

The lion was gone; sleeping somewhere, away from the stench and noon Heat, unaware the bone was even there.

I looked at that huge bone, and wondered. Probably from a horse,

I thought. The upper thigh perhaps, but what kind of horse? Had he sweated Away his life, dragging a plow, or strutted with pampered debutantes, or Raced for Kings or Presidents? Then, for a moment…

I was seven when my father reached down, then lifted me, high onto the Back of Champ, my Aunt’s magnificent, black Morgan.

Champ walked with me slowly, sensing this was my first time on a horse, Knowing I was just a child.

He wanted me to like horses.

And I do, still, after all these years.

Now, as people pass, they wonder why anyone would stand, staring, into An empty lion’s cage?

Almost empty, that is…

Stay

The ship lay in the harbor creaking my name.

Sea gulls dared me and the four winds,

Whispered promises.

Don’t go, my friends whimpered,

Fearing the uncertainty ahead.

But I was young, impatient.

The Atlantic howled its raging worst.

Years bucked, kicked and galloped by.

Fortune skipped illusively ahead.

All they had warned came true,

And it has been wonderful.

My Boss

Whatever I do, whatever I say,

He always wants, a different way.

I do my best, but try as I might,

It always turns out, Not quite right.

I chose steel, he said, It will rust.

If I use aluminum, he said, It would bust.

When I say, it won’t, he says, it might.

Whatever I do, it won’t be right.

I suggested wood, he says, It will rot.

If I think, it could, he says, it might not.

When I say, We do. he says, We don’t.

When I know, we should, we certainly won’t.

You do good work. he often says,

I wish he wouldn’t say it.

"The parts all fit, but you took so long,

Why do you complicate it?"

I finally designed the simplest machine,

Technicians grew to hate it.

Success at last. ‘till I heard one say,

I wish he’d complicate it.

I see the sun, he sees the rain,

I suggested by car, he went by plane.

In another life, we may agree,

But only… if he works for me.

Homework Assignment.

Night Hunter

Write a free verse poem. Use word imagery to gradually change something small and insignificant, into something much larger and interesting.

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Night Hunter

Scratching, rustling, gnawing sounds awakened me in the darkness of my cluttered room.

A mouse?

Playfully, as boys do, I slid from my bed, as silently as a shadow on my carpet. The scratching sound stopped.

I waited, staring into the darkest, farthest corner. On my stomach, stalking, my arms forward, outstretched, back arched and head up.

My drapes, sheer and as wispy as a ghost in the moonlight, flickered and swirled like the smoke from a jungle village fire. A screech owl tore

suddenly at the silence, and a neighbor’s dog howled wolf-like into the sweltering night. I could see him now. Silver gray, wild and beautiful, with fur long, but as sleek as fine silk.

He was upright, on haunches, with head high and eyes large, shining black, ears raised and lips snarled back, teeth white and menacing.

He gestured with front paws reaching, his snout long and as pointed as a wild boar, with whiskers sniffing for me as a lion does its prey. Sweat, cold and salty, trickled into my eyes, and my fingers clawed at the carpet as my heart thumped noisily. I shuddered as the drapes trembled with the breeze, weaving shadows into vines in that jungle, of my room.

My belt, lying where I had dropped it, flinched a moment, writhed, then slithered away into the darkness.

I dared not move.

He was bigger now.

This was his world. And he was of the night. Offspring of a million generations with intelligence to survive impossible odds.

A miracle, with senses each fine-tuned.

Eyesight keen, even in darkness, smell, hearing, teeth, each razor sharp, and with the speed of a rattlesnake.

And if threatened, like a she-bear with cubs, fearless, more vicious, willing to fight to the death.

As if the survival of her species hung by just a thread. Just me,

lying there, big, but as slow and helpless as a beached whale. Then, . . . I saw a second, smaller one,

peeping at me with startled, shiny black eyes, terrified. It was just a baby.

She had young.

I was dead.

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Back Talk

I sold a neighbor lady a parakeet for a pet, assuring her it would learn to talk. Eight months later she complained it had never said a single word. I paid her a visit.

It was obvious what the problem was. There were so many ladders, mirrors, and swings, bells and toys in his cage that Joey had far too many distractions.

He needs to be bored so he will concentrate on his lessons. I explained, insisting she remove all his toys.

Keep repeating ‘Pretty Joey,’ twenty times each night, just before you cover his cage and turn out the lights. I instructed.

She phoned me two nights later, jubilant and excited.

Joey spoke to me. She bubbled.

That’s wonderful. I replied, surprised, and equally thrilled.

It was during the night. She continued.

I heard this awful commotion. He was squawking and flapping his wings. I came downstairs and switched on the light. Joey was flapping around on the cage floor with feathers everywhere. It was then that he spoke.

What did he say? I asked.

It was as clear as could be. she continued.

Who moved my damned ladder? Then she hung up.

Homework Assignment.

Cold

Write a free verse poem describing something cold.

Cold

There is no word for cold. None even comes close to eating down into those numbing, tingling, icy depths. None cold enough to creep, invading, shivering, and chilling my very bones.

There is no word for cold. None approaches the stinging, biting pain of a piercing North wind. Or captures the foot stomping, eyelash freezing, breath hanging white, in that frigid snowy emptiness of winter.

No word is cold enough to convey the tinkle of shattered icicles, crunching beneath my boots in the frozen, diamond snows, as my teeth chatter so badly I clench them, tightly, unable now, to even say the word.

Homework Assignment.

Old Boot

Write a free verse poem describing something which is really worthless. Give it interest and far greater value.

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Old Boot

No! I said, quietly and firmly,

Stopping my son from tossing out,

My solitary, tired old boot,

With the springtime trash.

He couldn’t know my memories,

While trudging five hundred, rugged,

Beautiful European miles, when young,

That boot and I.

While its mate lies lost, rotting now,

These thirty years, in an Irish bog,

Sucked from my foot, as I ran for the last bus

Out of Laragh, County Wicklow.

But dad, it’s just a smelly, worthless old boot.

He said, with all the energy and persistence

Of his youth. And he was right of course.

But still, I kept it… even so.

Homework Assignment.

Forest Fire

Write a free verse poem describing a forest fire.

Forest Fire

Fire, raging, devouring the parched, dry forest,

has a terrible destructive grandeur all its own.

Beauty lies within beholder’s eyes, even when

teary from the ink black smoke, lashed by

sudden wind, swirling and rolling over all within

its path, like spewing lava, writhing snake-like, determined.

One beholder marvels, rooted, tree-like to the earth,

transfixed by the flaming horror of

destruction, praying for a deluge of rain.

Another howls wolf-like, in desperation, wringing his

Hands, yet marveling still, through smoke-burned eyes, streaming,

not wanting to miss a moment of this savage spectacle.

This roaring, coughing, booming inferno of black, acrid, belching

smoke, drafting, sucking charred leaves and pine needles

upward, toward the high, cold chilling heavens.

Then, cooled, they fall, snowing black as raven’s feathers, gently

Downward, tumbling, spiraling earthward, settling softly

Upon the glowing charcoal, still smoking, pitch-black place

Where once there was a forest.

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Wind Chimes

We lost our dog last fall,

as we raked leaves, and Brutus barked excitedly,

chasing the apples we threw for him.

Our three children giggled and carved faces on pumpkins,

their breath showing on that chilly, pleasant afternoon.

Our daughter Susan asked, why wind chimes played sad tunes?

We didn’t know.

My wife and I emptied our final barrow of leaves

on the huge pile behind the barn, then hung our rakes on

the garage wall. We felt good about our yard being tidy.

Then, suddenly, Brutus chased a squirrel in the road…

and