Ruminations, a Collection of Poems

By Helen Estes Seltzer

A collection of 29 poems and one short story. Many deal with the author's home city of Philadelphia, PA. A mother, a school teacher, and entrepreneur, she lived 1920-2010 in Rockville MD, Plymouth, NH, and Bristol, Feasterville, Huntingdon Valley, Columbia, and Philadelphia, PA, moving frequenly as her husband advanced through a series of jobs from teacher to school superintendent. She was the mother of two - Richard and Raven (Sallie).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seltzer Books
• Release date: Sep 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781455448111

Book preview

Helen Estes Seltzer, oil painting by her husband, Richard Seltzer, Sr.

Ruminations, a collection of poems by Helen Estes Seltzer

Published by Seltzer Books. seltzerbooks.com

established in 1974, as B&R Samizdat Express

offering over 14,000 books

feedback welcome: [e-mail]

Part One - Humor

Clashing Mirror of Ceiling and Mind

A Forest Tree and Me

A DNA Nightmare

Exposing and Deposing Leo

Those Bachelor Girl Blues

I Need a Valet

Never Had a Debut

Part Two - In Memoriam

Goliath and David

Jinney the Gipper

Part Three - Odes

A Valentine Ode to Bob

Ode to Ginger

Hong Kong Song

Ode to Hong Kong and Tai Chi

An Ode to Keats' Grecian Urn

Ode to Penny

Ode to Sallie

Ode to John Templeton

The Union League of Philadelphia

Part Four - Philosophy

The Eyes Have It

The Grey Years

Homeostasis

Lustrous Revelations

Part Five - Philadelphia

Philadelphia: City of Love and Liberty

Philadelphia: The Sapphire City

My Bench in the Park

Snow Ghost

In Old East Falls

Part Six - Women's World

An Anatomy of the Lives of Women in Ages Past

Conundrum

Part Seven - One Short Story

Jimmy Fortune's Way

PART ONE - HUMOR

CLASHING MIRRORS OF CEILING AND MIND

There I was living in a dream world --

in my own outer space.

Had kept myself looking younger

with pale blonde frosting to erase

some dowdy dark brown.

I seemed like a queen with a golden crown.

Then I had to suffer through a virtual hell

in a lovely but terrible, fateful hotel --

where there came over me an age-shaking fear,

in England's Lake Country Windemere.

The setting: the bathroom;

the culprit: a mirror in the ceiling

which evoked in me this strange new feeling.

It sent me crashing down to earth,    

and to stark reality gave birth.

The jig was up -- My natural wig was up --

and the villain was a spotlight-fixture

  starring in that fateful picture.

'Cause, there before me, finally exposed,

never by me ever even supposed,

was my own true salt and pepper thatch.

And it sent my well-ensconced happy