Runaways

Black horses are on the run

And Prince is leading all.

The warming haze of summer

Is pacing into fall.

Aging red barns are leaning

Against the starting wind.

Pale blue winter

Is on its way, old Prince.

Run, old Prince, run.

The geldings that lope along

Follow where you lead them.

By

Lowell Connolly

Meadow Memories

Mayme and I, with the bare and

crusted feet of the younger ones,

searching for an unknown greatness

in our own small fantasy worlds.

The wonders of the home meadows

were filled with them everywhere.

Yet, seemingly to evade and hide

endlessly its milkweed and hidden

nests with speckled and sometimes

blue eggs cooling, with the mother

meadowlark hovering and watching

near on the yellow blooming clover.

Snakes and past lingering smells

of meadows and sluice, all renewing

itself in every temporal spring.

Oh, to laugh or cry in the new

and benevolent hours of youth.

Mayme and I, both running over

the meadows and calling it spring.

by

Lowell Connolly

Tom's Weathereye

A windmill wheel and a man with

 a weather eye, both forecasting

impending storms.  Tom, now not

spindly tall like old creaking

mills, was more robust and solid

like packed clay earth after the

warm spring rains.

Some days Tom kept closer eyes

on the old windmill.  With quick

dire warnings and endless days,

the southeast wind would blow.

Tom, often casting dark eyes or

glancing sidewise, looked upward

at the turning wheel.  A turning,

whining mill wheel and fan with

omens on a blowing wind.  Tom was

a man of omens and windmills.

A man knowing God sending rains

and omens of pelting rains.

by

Lowell Connolly