Georgia Decker

Bloomingdale, MI, USA

I started writing poems about ten years ago. I put chords to some of them so I can sing and play them on my guitar. A recording company in Nashville recorded one of them. I’ve been a farm wife and homemaker most of my life. My husband always worked as a Millwright in a paper mill. I always stayed on the farm, keeping records and making sure the animals were inside the fences. In the summer, I would can and freeze about 100 quarts of produce from our farm. I notice good ideas for poems, living in the country, close to nature.

The Man With The Round Shoulders

Milking cows, then off to school, milking cows again before the day would end.
This lad of five, helping his dad, and family to survive.
Going to a little school in the country, he finished grade school in six years
Rather in a hurry.
His teen age years were spent with threshing machine crews, harvesting grain.
Learning all about the machinery they used, was to his gain!
His knowledge of machinery at a young age, gave him a chance to operate
a crane for the U.S. Navy.
He operated a crane at a Guam navy supply depot, when he was twenty.
Back to civilian life, he mastered the machinery of a huge paper making
company, becoming it’s highest paid millwright employee.
Many years later, talking to his wife one day, he mentioned how milking
cows by hand, was hard on the shoulders. Now she finally knew, why his
shoulders were round instead of square and true.

Hills of Home

Riding old pete over the hills, finding Indian head pennies and arrow heads
In those pine covered hills of home.
The dog was baying away, and was found with three badgers cornered in a cave.
Papa didn’t like the looks of those critters, he blew away two, and one
got away. In those pine covered hills of home.
The sudden screeching and flapping of wings, when Guinea hens flew up
stopping a hawk, swooping for a meal from the chicken flock.
In those pine covered hills of home.
Rabbits feeding on the lawn, unafraid of my sister passing by.
Deer and their fawn, are sometimes seen, in those hills of home in Michigan.

To My Grand-Daughter

Whoop-tee-do and icky-poo, my grand-daughter I love you.
Sticky suckers in my car, and grass hoppers in a jar.
Grandma’s girl with her new bike, trying to make it go right.
I can’t, I can’t—you can, you can! You big doll you’re bound to win.
Little sweetheart of our lives, with those big brown eyes.