Polar Parade

Wolves wearing stoles of bright winter white,
Pad intricate icy prints in the forest at night.
A nodding old owl, feathers frosted with light,
Snoots, ruffling snowflakes and crystal moonlight.

Sugarcoated bunnies bound over alabaster dunes,
Pristine polar bears tumble on icy, silver blooms.
After up and downy tumbling, tired cubs cocoon,
Inside cold caves covered in blue icicle runes.

The falling flakes, shimmering stars flicker and fade,
Frozen fire rosettes in a winter's waterfall cascade.
Might bear, stately wolf marshal a Midwinter's Parade,
Lesser creatures gambol behind the Great White Cavalcade.

Friendly foxes, splotched does, and sleepy seals in a row,
March under the Midnight Sun, silhouettes in the snow.
The sparking troop eyes Northern Lights and reverently bows,
Paying solemn tribute to Arctic skies and the opal Polar Glow.

Book Bark

I think that I shall never see
A book so lovely as a tree
But, oh, the stories within the spine
Inspire greatly as a Pine!

Miniver Cheevy and I

I keep my castles in a book, right beside my bed.
And now and then I cross the moat to ease my modern head.
. . . . . . . . . .
Miniver and I share magical dreams – a portal to the soul.
It is the only way we know to keep our psyches whole.
So if you see us over parapets peeking and tiptoeing around the tower,
Prithee, my friend, please understand – it is the wishing hour!
Chancy

To The English Department At Leon

How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!!!!

Thrice the clanging bell hath sounded,
Thrice and once the students whined,
Teacher cries, “Tis time, tis time.”

Round about the classroom go,
Pass the papers down the row,
Essays, that under florescent lights,
Made our eyes bleed for days and nights.

Double, double toil and trouble,
Parent conferences and hallway squabbles,
When school is like a witch’s brew,
Heineken, not Hemlock will get you through.

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Happy Halloween to my new friends!!!
Diane (Hecate) Chancy

Sister Mary Elifritz

Thrice upon a time in a long-forgotten world,
Obscured by gnarled limbs and tangled vines that swirled,
Snaking ‘round pagan stones and moss-covered monoliths,
Came soldiering a Catholic nun, Sister Mary Elifritz.

Of hardy constitution and hefty, muscular build,
A meaty-armed woman, branches and briars hurled,
Scything remote country, to carve a useful path,
Came Sister Mary Elifritz, wanting cognac and a bath.

Such a stalwart nun can be a frightful sight,
Terse lips pressed in purpose, a mass of black and white,
Proudly puritan by nature and stoical in habit,
Came Sister Mary Elifritz, looking rather rabid.

‘Twas her fiery spirit and a passion for the mission,
A general bossy character (no priest got her submission),
A call from God was heard, to convert the heathen natives,
Came Sister Mary Elifritz to shrive, baptize, and live!

In the misty, steel-gray mountains, nestled tightly in a cave,
Tribesmen snored; mothers stirred; little children played.
Unsuspecting innocents, embraced in earth’s cocoon,
Happily oblivious Sister Mary Elifritz arrived at noon.

Missionary history records danger, disease, and death,
But usually for the native, indigenous culture so bereft,
Of civility and structure and Christian consideration,
Comes Sister Mary Elifritz aimed at tribal purification.

Visions of wicker cages, boiling cauldrons on her mind,
Exotic agonies, tribal tortures - none did she expect to find.
But if it came and if she went, a destiny she would not resent,
So intent was Sister Mary Elifritz the pagans would repent.

Unfinished
Chancy

Lumberjack Jawing and Wood Sawing

Baby I'm a blogger; I just can't believe it.
My family folks are loggers; they just won't read it.
Lumberjacks don't have time to flip through blogs,
Read long-winded logs by some blogging jack jaw.
They only have time to roll the logs, pole the clogs,
Get those trees down river and get that wood to saw.
Now they'll flip some flapjacks and griddle cakes,
And they'll flap their jaws for heaven's sake!
They understand logging, tobogganing, and mud bogging!
But they won't buy into this hack saw blogging.
For fiddle sakes and greasy hoe cakes!
Lumberjacks don't like bloggin' for heaven's sake.

Round About

Round about the Seasons spin,
The Wheel of Life turns again,
And weaves the Sabbats in a cosmic shawl,
Worn by the Goddess who rules us all.
From the May pole’s ribbons of pink and green,
She braids the fabric of a Midsummer’s dream;
The Maiden returns from her Underworld rest,
To don her violet girdle and white daisy vest.
A radiant June sews copper threads in her hair.
Queen of Summer Solstice; she is most passing fair.
Swollen with seed and flushed by the heat,
Soon in the fields, the Horned Lord she will meet.
From Mother’s Harvest Birth, we reap the Gifts of Earth:
Gourds and grain, roots and fruit, heaped on our hearth.
And November’s brittle net of russet, bronze, and gold,
Catches amber tears, yet she welcomes growing old.

The Wet Autumnal Warp and the Windy Winter Woof,
Braid twisted, crystal icicles hanging from her roof.
She wears a silver cape of the purest Yuletide Snow,
From Candlemas to Christmas, she twinkles all aglow.
Both the Holly King and the Green Man of Spring,
Court the Spinning Goddess whose Cycles bring,
Flying Colored Threads and the Turning Wooden Wheel,
The Fabric of our Lives from the Distaff as it whirls.
Round about the Quarters revolve,
Round about the Mother evolves,
Round about from Sun to Snow,
Round about the Seasons go.
Round about the Circle. Sing!
Round about goes Everything!

Written in 1998.
Diane Chancy