While you prayed

by john clare

While you prayed I numbered your hairs
Spread some seed for your sparrows
Covered the shivering lilies beside you lying,
Poured some water for you from the wine.

Is that not what the lover should do?
Answer your prayers for you?
When I stilled your sea and opened your eyes
Did you not first see my stars dancing in the skies?

I heard your every plea to let you see
But know I had to love you secretly
For had you but glimpsed the one who counts hairs
The bride would have stopped her continual prayers

And into this Kingdom you would never have come
So sleep peacefully my love, your lilies shall blossom.

Threshold of Tirzah

Threshold of Tirzah
I Kings 14:17
by john clare

The forgotten footfalls from a life of passing
Patiently brushing down to a smoothed bow
Broom straw strands scattered once fastened
Echoes of patters across the threshold of Tirzah.

Long has gone even the memory of little crossings
The lift of lightened limbs weighed in joy
Loveliness resting in the radiant dust clinging lost
Stirred by winds who knew the only boy.

To the threshold Tirzah comes to peer
Down the overgrown path of Camilla bloom
Who can know the joy of sorrow stooping here
The little one that ascended all too soon.

Forever on the bowed threshold Tirzah remains
The weeping winds forever whispering his name.

The First Full Moon over Suwannee

I was sitting home late this afternoon, mulling the day, the keeping of Nathaniel, our 24th anniversary yesterday, knowing tonight was thefirst full moon of 2012. I decided sort of on the spur of the moment after listening to the Moody Blues Voices in the Sky on Pandora
to head up to White Springs. I checked the map to see where the moon possibly would rise and when. It was to rise at 6:38 so by 5:15 I was loaded and headed for the Suwannee River at the 41 Bridge. Arriving, the construction crew working on the railroad bridge were packing up, so I waited a moment until they departed and crossed the tracks, walking upstream a way.
I alternated with the Nikon D5000 in HDR three exposure mode and the Canon S95 on a Jobo tripod. The Nikon soon ran out of memory and as usual, I was without a spare. I headed back to the bridge to wait the moon. It grew dark and cloudy, but finally the moon came over the pines, further to the East than I had anticipated, not over the river as I had hoped.
I took several fifteen second exposures and worked on trying to get the moon underexposed, the rest of the scene exposed. I did not succeed in the effort. I also found when I downloaded, that the shadow of the bridges cast a distinct straight shadow which confused the composition, making it look double exposed. Next time out, I will go for a location without the bridge casting such a shadow.
I am going to try next outing to construct a little dodger, to place in front of the lens where the moon is, holding it over that spot until just one or less seconds. The moon is bright as daylight, at about 125 sec or faster. Over-all, just a nice time out on the river all alone.

Prayer Abounding

Today around 1:30 I had just completed posting on Facebook a prayer request for Melanie. I said, If you would like to have a part in helping someone escape an asylum, please pray for Melanie today as she has a phone interview very important to her. And many did respond. And as she came home this evening at six, she had a severe migraine headache. More oppression upon her. She went to bed with a hot pack to wait for the seven o'clock call. At seven, the call came and lasted for about forty-five minutes. The interviewer said for someone without this type experience, they had never seen someone so accurate in their answers. They hired her without the need for further interviews. Her next step is to hopefully go to Las Vegas for the week training in February, even though her schedule to go is March. We hope a scratch occurs and she can go sooner, as she really needs out of her commute and hardship issues where she currently works.
"As she stood beyond the dead line, the razored loop of steel, the Angel said, Why look ye to yonder asylum? Prayers have been lifted and now child, run, RUN!" john clare
And about that time I walked over to the front door of the house and looked up and took this photograph of the gathering Angels.

Three from January 6th

January photographs

Return to Sopchoppy

Asa was typical of the pathos found scattered up and down the old Seaboard Coast Line these days of unemployed poets sitting home, spending their waking hours glued to some Facebook chat or Blog, doing nothing beside what whey really should be doing at fifty seven.
The ober-child never having or wanting to set aside that adolescent age where mommy provides and they blithely consume.
All Asa's life choices were directed toward this inevitable outcome, from the formative years when he manipulated the old colored maid to buy him toys, feigning screaming tantrums if she demurred.
It continued with the art lessons the desperate mother signed him on for to see if she may channel this little church doodler into a direction to his bend. It was of little profit, he painted for a time the dog Bobo, the alps, the still life, the old fisherman after Vincent and shipped them off to relatives in Mississippi and Georgia, never to be hung, found in closets and behind couches when he came for visits.
We know not when Asa took up the pen. Sometime after Arturo entered Wilmore Elementary and all his friends said Arturo draws much better than you. Surmising it must be so based on the Mountain Lions behind the sofa and such, it was about then Asa turned with vigor to sports. Again mother obliged and the hoops were raised, the punt, pass and kicks entered, the little leagues pursued. With ardor unknown, Asa rose to the level of outrunning Jimmy Haines down to the rail and back, crowning him the fastest boy in any grade as far as he was concerned.
He never saw them coming, but they did. It was through the side entrance East they came, Wilson James and his colored boys of above the rim men. First they stormed the gym then headed out to the cinder track and dashed Asa off the hundred, consigning him to the bench and middle distances.
What was left for Asa, the hollow boy before his time, but to revert back to the innocent bottle fed times, the days of ole Sopchoppy, sitting with his best friends Robert and Sam on the river bank, rife with brim, swimming to the far side to watch from the raised dock the day that was never in a hurry to pass.
And so he stayed.
There were perfunctory attempts to return to adulthood, but he found Walden and his civil obedience was there to stay.
"Sopchoppy! Next stop Sopchoppy!"

Christina's world record

by john clare

The day Christina went beyond Twenty-nine feet two and one half inches

The three story fall
That Christina took
Just broke the record
That Beamer set
Finally to fall
Twenty-three years
Hence
You crawled
Less than fourteen
Down the runway
to the raked sand pit
From the thin air
Like Beamer
You landed
Not even a cow saw
The fall
You made
Not even a referee
Was present to
Disqualify the
Scratch you made
Your big toe just
Touching the
The loft's threshold
takeoff plate
On your crawl up.
Christina
Not all leapers
Were loved
Andrew
Not all lovers
Leaped.

Bob

One of my favorite photographs I took of Robert Jones

He had a Nikon Camera

Bob Jones with his vintage Nikon F

Bob Jones

Treasured Hunters

Robert Jones for years was my canoe partner upon the waters of Suwannee, Santa Fe, Itchetucknee and others of memory. We drove down to Longwood to pick out the first of several canoes, a fourteen foot Mohawk he dubbed Dougon after the ancient Manatee. We soon outgrew that one and journeyed back to the factory to purchase a seventeen foot white Kevlar fiberglass version of the Blazer. Robert and I first met in the early eighties via the Lake City Runners Club, where in his fifties, he was one of the fastest in his age group. A retired Air Force Photographer, with his vintage Nikon F, we would go on many photographic ventures. A very studied, deliberate style in contrast to my speedy way, we were an odd couple. Our favorite time of year when not paddling, was to take his yellow and white VW camper bus to North Georgia and the Carolina's in the fall to camp and photograph. Again, fastidious and deliberate in getting ready each morning, I was always jumping at the bit to go.
Never marrying and me single up until 1986, we had plenty of time to pursue the photography, biking, canoeing, camping and running.
In addition, as a fellow artist, he in oils, me in pen and ink, we used the photography as subject matter for our works.
Robert is still with us as I write this. He is in his upper eighties, spends most of his time at his home and at his sisters son's home. I stop by whenever I can and we talk of the old days. Of how he found this treasure in the Suwannee while Scuba diving, of how there were no shadows under his feet as he crossed the finish line of the Jacksonville Marathon in the photo finish. Of how we should get the old runners together. How he wants to start painting. Get the bike down and air it up. Take the solo Mad River canoe out from the shed. Much talk, little action these days. While he called himself a treasure hunter, I will always treasure the friendship I had with Bob Jones.