Bend low

 Many the time I've seen the old river

Bend low to reveal her curving spine

I cast my eyes from her demure

Knowing floods shall cover her in time.

Memory of Mixson

 Memory of Mixson

John Clare stokes

Coming to Williston in sixty-seven

That summer this seventh grader

got his first job driving a tractor for

Clifford Mixson in Morriston 

After nearly running over him

Teaching me the gears and clutch

Such a patient man

And so I began out Freddie Hale way

Spending all day for a dollar an hour

in the hay field

And at the end of day

I’d pull into the shade

And wait for him

To take me home

And if I broke down

There was no phone

And I’d just sit in the shade all day

In hopes Mixson would come

To check up on me.

A praise

Wendell Berry

His memories lived in the place

like fingers in the rock ledges

like roots. When he died

and his influence entered the air

I said, Let my mind be the earth

of his thought, let his kindness

go ahead of me. Though I do not escape

the history barbed in my flesh,

certain wise movements of his hands,

the turns of his speech

keep with me. His hope of peace 

keeps with me in harsh days,

the shell of his breath dimming away

three summers in the earth.

The Browns

 "If you are one who fears the LORD, He will teach you the way you should choose. You will enjoy good things in your life, and your children will inherit the land. If you fear the LORD, He will be your friend and show you what His covenant means." Psalm 25:12-14.

It was the year 1976, the Stokes family reunion in Homewood, Mississippi. It was a Sunday afternoon and my father,mother, Lewis and Goliath drove out from Homewood in Scott County to visit  William Henry and Juliah Hettie Brown, whom was as a father to my father in his days of growing up there before WW2. It was the last time my father would ever see them again, William died in 1986 and Juliah in 1992. I think when we left that afternoon they knew that as well.

In the tock

 

Ethels remains

 Shoes and shawl that Ethel wore

John Clare Stokes

I like the song Tom T Hall sang on his Songs from Sopchoppy album, Shoes and dress that Alice wore. Several years back, my cousin from Mississippi, Jeanne Bradford Rowland, gifted me with her mother and my fathers mother  size 4 shoes, her shawl, dress gloves and a braided lock of her auburn hair. We never knew Ethel Marie Wike, born Jan 28, 1899 and who died sadly on August 1, 1937 at their home in Homewood, Mississippi. My father was only 14 and Aunt Esther Irene 11. Recently the shadow box the items were in was broken by the cats. Yesterday the new and deeper shadow box arrived. I am grateful to Jeanne for keeping her memory alive.

On Panther Lane

 

Dead man walking

Leave a note

You never know

It could be your last

And you wouldn’t want

To leave your loved ones

Without some final lines

 Dead men working

I will keep on photographing

Writing so called poetry

Until the day I’m gone

You can find it in the

Middle room

Stacked quite haphazard 

Enough to make

One fine fire if perchance

It’s the wintry season

I’ve departed

White white white

 Whited mantles

If I see another perfectly arranged life

With the whited theme

I shall scream

But then

Who would hear

O the ignominy 

Of the off whites

Ashes, ashes

Ringing around the rosies 

As the Eastside PE instructor had the third graders circled, my hands tightened upon the wheel. Again I was on the Monticello playground. The instructor telling us the last one to fall down would have to tell who their girl or boy friend is. Terror seized me. 

They must not know who I secretly liked.

Under the bus

 

Both my grandfathers were associated with buses. Grandpa Orander was a bus driver and Grandfather Stokes store was a bus stop. 

Called to fly

 There are those called to fly

Before they ever take wing

In womb hear the Sandhill cry

Or feel the oceans roaring

There is a softer wind

There is a quieter song

There is a darkness fleeing

There is a coming home

Brownie and Magoo

 The boy and the magical Brownie

Each day the boy and his Brownie

would set out in wonderment 

to see what magical scenes unfolded

before them

and it wasn’t long

I’d say around seven frames

they’d find a cloud beckoning

to rest upon it for the next

Seven wonders to visit them.