prose

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Stabant Autem In Perpetuum

It is with sadness that I report that last week, this home’s ash tree succumbed to the woodsman’s ax and chain saw. The end came quickly after a short illness and straight line winds. While the tree demurely refused to count her rings, It was generally believed that she germinated around forty to fifty years ago. We have been told that she was never married, still there are many friends that are left to mourn her passing, including Robbie the grey squirrel, Charlotte the spider, many blackbirds and starlings that sang so sweetly from her limbs, and finally the scores of dogs and cats that sniffed and marked her trunk during their travels.

Interment will be in Harry’s wood pile and crematorium, where her trunk will be split for distribution.

The service was officiated by Affordable Tree and Landscape Services of St. James, Minnesota.

Donations and remembrances can be sent to the Minnesota Extension Service, who provided final consultation at the end.

-CJ Holm

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Murmuring Souls

Created for Susi Bocks Challenge

woods

Art Credit – Google Image

I write her weekly Haiku/Senryu Challenge 30 – July 30, 2019

These murmuring souls
sacrificed to the dark god
of the pagan woods

Forever silenced soldiers
-lost Tiberius’ phalanx

-CJ Holm
From Chapter 73 of Tacitus’s Annals.

“Soon afterwards it was ascertained from deserters that nine hundred Romans had been cut to pieces in a wood called Baduhenna, after prolonging the fight to the next day, and that another body of four hundred, which had taken possession of the house of one Cruptorix, once a soldier in our pay, fearing betrayal, had perished by mutual slaughter.”

https://iwriteher.com/2019/07/30/i-write-her-weekly-haiku-senryu-challenge-30/

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Bring It Back

Ormsby Field

Ormsby, MN Ball Field

Our Old Field

(Sung with Gusto to tune of My Bonnies lies over the Ocean)

There once was a town that played softball,
Our teams all played with great skill!
In Ormsby we cheered for our hitters,
And heckled opponents with glee.

Bring back, bring back
Oh, bring back our slow pitch to town, to town.
Bring back, bring back
Oh, bring back America’s game.

Our players were locally famous,
The chanted their names at Knight’s Lounge!
They swung for fence with abandon
But struck out most of the time.

Bring back, bring back
Oh, bring back our slow pitch to town, to town.
Bring back, bring back
Oh, bring back America’s game.

The lights have been burned out for ages
The base paths are now overgrown
Our bleachers were sold off to Odin
The gophers have eaten the grass

Bring back, bring back
Oh, bring back our slow pitch to town, to town.
Bring back, bring back
Oh, bring back America’s game.

There once was a town that played softball,
Our teams all played with great skill!
In Ormsby we cheered for our hitters,
And heckled opponents with glee!

 

©2019 cj holm

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The Ash Tree

ash-tree

I lost an Ash tree
That had been part of my yard
It was there before me
And I had watched it grow large.

I had climbed it and cursed it,
Made it part of a wall.
I watered and trimmed it,
And raked its’ leaves last Fall.

It served up a shadow,
Cool respite from the sun.
It shielded my garden,
From harsh winds from the West

I noticed lost branches,
At first just a few.
They broke off in windstorms
And littered the yard.

Last summer I witnessed
The shade had grown smaller.
Large limbs had grown brittle,
So many were gone.

The trunk had grown hollow
Now it was home for the ants.
The blackbirds still chattered
But the red robins had moved on.

I spoke with a neighbor,
I was concerned for a barn.
If the tree were to fall over,
It might cause great harm.

We brought out our axes
And went on with the task.
We took down the Ash tree,
Now just a memory of the past.

-cj holm

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Unbound

Sylvie Gregoire

Soul Soaring – Painting by Sylvie Grégoire

Highest honor found
when truth soars with eagle’s wings
-hero’s dreams unfold

                              -cj holm
Ronovan Writes Haiku Challenge 227 Truth / Honor
Prompt words: Truth & Honor
Haiku in 5-7-5

ronovan-writes

https://ronovanwrites.com/2018/11/12/ronovanwrites-weekly-haiku-poetry-prompt-challenge-227-truthhonor/

“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

-Roosevelt Skerrit

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Nutcracker Scheme

scrooge

Charge of sugarplums
Drawn-out for countless payments
-December reason

Twinkling dreams of fairy tales
Fiscal ruin comes in it’s stead

                                                 -cj holm

Ronovan Writes Haiku Challenge 219 Charge / Reason
5-7-5 7-7

ronovan-writes

https://ronovanwrites.com/2018/09/17/ronovanwrites-weekly-haiku-poetry-prompt-challenge-219-chargereason/

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Roots

I just received my results from Ancestry DNA. The results confirmed the research I’ve completed over the last 20 years that I am officially a displaced European “Mutt”!

heritage

For nearly two centuries, my genes were created by a indiscriminate breeding of the cast-off population of Scandinavia and Germany.  That my ancestors ended up in the Midwest portion of America by choice or a lack of direction is still under review. What is known is that all arrived seeking a better life for themselves or their family, not unlike the current crop of immigrant settling around us now.

My family history includes stories of young men and woman escaping war and famine. Some came for opportunities not available in their crowded homeland. Some were following their dreams, while others arrived because they drew the short straw! Whatever happened that made them take to the sea in the mid-eighteen hundreds, they all ended up as farmers and shopkeepers on the dusty plains of Dakota.

Together they survived because of a rugged independence imbued on them by the conditions they chose to settle in. They were a stubborn, some would say obstinate, people who made the best of their situation. (Who else would think that rotted cabbage and dried up whitefish (Sauerkraut and Lutefisk) could be cherished as the makings of a holiday treat?)

The fact that I still live happily in the rural midwest could be considered a testiment or a curse of the genes that shaped my being.

-CJ Holm