Escorts and Greeters
Keeping the skeeters
At bay
Keeping me company
Along my way
Monday, November 4, 2024
Mizpah
Mizpah. Nov4.
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, even in Thy holy temple. Ps.lxv.4.
We shall be so filled that nothing can be said to be wanting; we shall have nothing to look for outside. Robert Bellarmine.
The slivered light
The slivered light
The first light of dawn
Breaking through the mist
Comes as a morning gift
As we lift in song
A praise for the day given
As a friend so well says
To be again among the living.
The cattle know
The cattle know
It’s not of the natural order for
These metal Cheetahs who speed
Upon the grey hard trail
To slow and watch them grazing
It sends them stampeding
Escaping this threat
As down the asphalt trail
Comes another cheetah
Honking his terrible call
Move on! Move on!
Cheetahs do not pause
We are made for speed.
Hiding Heron
Ichetucknee Heron Hiding
He put up such a valiant rendition of a limb
I pretended I did not see him
Yellowjackets Always
Yellowjacket always
When I saw the Yellowjackets yesterday fighting over the left over sugar water in the hummingbird feeder, my mind went back to Sopchoppy and how I adored the Coach Red Sanders led Yellowjackets football teams. With my sister in the Birch led band, Robert, Sam, JL, Maxie and my other friends would play behind the bleachers, pretending we were on the field. I was always Walt, the star halfback. I loved those black uniforms with the striped shoulders. I was elated in latter years after we had moved from Sopchoppy, when my hero, Walt Dickson, paid us a visit. It was a most sad day when the Wakulla County schools of the Crawfordville Panthers and the Sopchoppy Yellowjackets merged into one school at Medart to become the War Eagles. I still cannot accept that to this day.
Escape Route
Escape route
I tried to rouse you
Your escape route
was taking off
You said, let me sleep in
I’m in no shape for
Escaping.
Rifle Range Road
Rifle Range Road
I’ve seen many changes over the years to the Osceola National Forest Rifle Range Road, so named for the Lewis Whittaker gun range the Game Commission maintains. It once was a narrow sandy road with a thick canopy of trees. We would meet at the Moose Lodge parking lot on Watertown Lake every afternoon to make the usual six mile run out to Still Road, or to the second cattle gap and back. Sometimes we would go longer, depending on the season. In those days, free range cows were kept in the forest by the cattle gaps. The piney wood cows were not intimidated and often they refused to yield the road, as we skirted around in the tick waiting palmettos.
This was the road I once ran past the parked pest control truck, not realizing the weight lifter Steve had just committed suicide inside it. It was the starting point of many long mountain bike rides with my late friend Roger. It was the place Judy, Nancy and I rode in her old pickup in her ardent environmentalism up to Impassable Bay in search of red-cockaded woodpecker nests. It was the sand where we could tell by the shoe prints, who had come before us; Joe with the one Nike shoe sliding with the miniature collie prints beside him, the Adidas of Buddy, the Saucony of Russell, the Gatorskins of Rick and Ben. The road where I found the arrow point, running the last mile whooping as Jumper with Osceola. The road I now drive slowly in search of Monarchs and Bald Eagles, maybe a buck or even a Canebrake.
I miss the slow sand ruts, not so much picking gallberry switches, to run and keep off our backs the yellow and deer fly gauntlet of summer. I miss the shaded canopy, the wide packed limestone road now a white cloud covering everything with each passing pickup. Most of all I miss the meeting of so many friends, the many miles spent riding, running, walking and biking this ever developing road into the forest of never forgotten.
Blindside
Blindside
I could not see the tree for the no see Um’s
But it seems it was all in my vision
For I was told, it’s as clear as any autumn
day, why do you see bugs, when there are none?
Awake beyond
Awake beyond
The lady said, how cool, I’ve never seen a setting moon. Another remarked, oh my, I’ve never seen the seven crowned crab spider. And so it went, things never seen right in front of us upon the trail or at eye level in the early morning sky.
And so we slumber through life in a hazy state, seeing only the light between the narrow slits.
I suppose we shall awake in eternity, and exclaim. It’s just a shame the prelude given here is passed over.
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