The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: Melancholy

  • Happy Melancholy Day!

    I was in the 8th grade, taking a multiple choice vocabulary test. I came to melancholy. One of the choices was happy. Another choice was sad. The word melancholy sounded happy. I blackened the circle next to happy with my number 2 black pencil on the Iowa Test page and moved on, but the word stayed with me, and I later asked Sister Mary Annette the meaning of melancholy. Her blue eyes peered out from her starched white habit hallowed in black. Sad, she said. Ah, what does Iowa know, I responded, and ran for the playground.

    Cartoon: Scamble and Cramble and the Social Media Adventure

  • Melancholy

    I don’t know if kids are still made
    to take them, the Iowa Tests,
    of course I could look it up,
    not beyond googling, but Wiki
    has no memory of this echo.

    I was in the 8th grade, yellow
    #2 black bile pencil at the ready,
    desk cleared, humors silent.
    This one was a vocabulary test,
    and one word from it sticks

    in memory still: melancholy.
    Four choices, and I pick
    happy, reasoning based
    solely on sound – I thought
    the tinkling mellow, jolly

    joyful
    and cock-a-hooped
    filled the circle C and
    moved to the next word.
    Later, I happened to ask

    Sister Mary what it meant,
    melancholy, and whadayaknow,
    I was veracious
    and ran out to recess
    happy as a clam at high tide.

  • A Shuck of Stone

    When the lemon yellow of a doubtful flower tells lies
    And the hush pink plum blossoms first fail to surmise
    A touch and a kiss turn to stone.

    When the steep turn toward the dark cherry dyes
    And find winkle’s wake still seeping under the sash
    A drink and a dress turn to stone.

    To turn to stone is not to die and worm away
    A stone never slept nor arose
    A stone is a stone is a stone is a stone.

    When knickknacks walk and talk and wingding
    The livelong night no wonder
    A flower turns to stone.

    Hearths are made of stone, and wheels, and paths,
    And walls, and dwellings, and churches, and busts.
    A stone thrown skiffles across water and plops.

    When a shuck of stone falls from the sky
    Not a soft place on the land to nest
    A tempest has turned to stone.

    When in spring one feels petrified
    Curl and pit and weigh and hurl
    Slink and creep and push and pull.

    When the angels of spring go stone
    Old stones erupt in new waves
    And lyrical flowers woe no bloom.