I look within

 

Hydrangea home

 Hydrangea home

Where the hydrangea bloom

Was once my bunked bed room

Where now are columns tall

Was a fence with zinnias sprawling

Then an open field small

Where my uncle and I tossed balls

Across the street loomed Hughes

With the organ with pipes huge 

In the late night a student practicing 

My little room with Bach reverberating

Asbury was a place dear to us

The duplex with the like family beside us

Fitting that the hydrangea marks our place

Their blooms upon our memory trace.

Osiana

 Osiana Kemp

john clare 

All that remained on

The terrible Twenty-sixth

April of twenty-three

Were the roses that

Spread in the shade

Of the pitch pine porch

The delicate pink petals

Sought for the weddings

And altar displays up at

Hopewell, placed there

Lovingly by Ola and Osiana

Scorched now from the

Intense flames

No wedding bouquet for her

Dreams of crossing oceans

Far from Benton gone

The flames in the spilling 

Of the kerosene lantern

Taking her away.

She came in May of O Nine, 

She held on til the first day

Of May, twenty three

With a spray of pink roses

For Osiana.

The Shining Congregation

Hopewell Baptist

Extreme Northern Columbia Co.

Some members, noted little Osiana Kemp, upper left, burned to death in a house fire trimming the lantern.

These things

 Quest

The sitting by the river

The waiting

The bobbing

The nibble

The disappearing cork

These things thrilled me

The pulling in

The fish out of water

The unhooking

The thrill waned

The slime upon hands

The scaling

The gutting

The head cutting

The gasping for water

These things I wonder why

I stopped fishing 

The walking in the woods

The smell of morning

The feel of shells

The warmth of wool

The quiet sitting

The daydreaming

The rustling

The click off safety

The slow aiming

The game falling

The blood upon hands

The gutting

The skinning

The flies gathering

These things I wonder why

I stopped hunting

The long shower

The combing hair

The jade east cologne

The paisley tie

The matching socks

The nervous stammer

The fear to reach

The first clasp of hands

The dream of kiss

These things thrilled me

These things I wonder why

I miss them so.  

Mary Brown

 Mary Brown

Misses Cindy Brown

You have a lovely mother

If I weren't so taken

I'd ask Mary Brown

For her arthritic hand

For you see

Mary is Ninety six

And she dances

She keeps candy

She was friends with

Jacqueline Kennedy 

She has this charm

This twinkle in the eye

I think a year or more

With your lovely mother

Would be Camelot.

Dreams Of Elijah

 Dreams of Elijah

John Clare Stokes

Elijah desperately wants a girlfriend

No one will have him

Too set in his ways

No sign of easy to love money

Mostly he plays gin rummy

Tries to get a run from the same suit

He lets them win

It keeps them sitting longer

Eventually the game ends

Elijah bends over the black walker

Raspy voice barely discernible 

He once had a girl

But it came to an end

When she revealed her matching pair 

He keeps the photograph

As a reminder

Never to play cards again

With Queens wild.

Tears of Gray

 Tears of Gray

John Clare Stokes 

In my every solemn timid step

I hear their measured determined cadence

The awful thunder in the far Olustee distance 

I move aside and bow my head in respect.

Standing alone in the charred out palmetto 

Looking through the piney woods smoldering

Mine eyes alone the ranks of gray beholding

I follow from afar with the ghosts flowing.

To Ocean Pond we shall come to meet the invaders

The cannon raining cones upon us rebel yelling

The Pileated fleeing with the yellow- bellied

Keeping apace with the boys a drumming.

A leap of ember and a sudden reeling

Why have I followed these gray wraiths 

Cowardly I tremble behind a loblolly safely

Musket and grape shot the bark peeling.

In the aftermath on the quiet Osceola glade

Eyes stinging from the sulfurous choking 

There stares an artiface rigid in the smoke

Tears of grey an ascending sacrifice made.

Rough

 Life is “rough” 

There we were assembled in the

spray fields

Opened to us perchance to record

that wayward Ruff 

blown across the gulf

veering from some internal map 

to flap its way to us

those with the life lists to complete

before John James called them home

were first in the order of pecking

Leopolds and Zeiss 

Glass beyond five hundred

Carried by Sherpas burdened

Followed by the bantam Bushnells

And off brand tasco glass

Not good for much 

Not up for the task at hand

Not even sure what a Ruff was

Curious more than called

Trooping at a pace so as not to

Cause a flush

The collected order of birders

In the uniforms of off green colors

moved as if on cue

then up came the hand of Jerry

for he could hear before we could see

and a hush descended

the fingers fumbled

the focus sharpened 

the pen pushed to the unchecked box

you could hear a lens drop

and there, at least a half mile ahead

among the coot and assembled no names

Preened as if sent from Audubon himself

the heavenly Ruff

we of the lesser glass

were called to the front

to view through the Swarovski 

spotting scope

this visage in its winter plumage 

we see! we see! But dared not say

We hadn’t a clue what we saw.

And so in a climax of sorts

We went into a post after smoke

Quiet in our own ecstasy 

Steeled for the long trudge back

To the assembled Prius.

Life is rough

At least for a day it was.

Penelope’s Presence

     Presences

W.B.Yeats

This night has been so strange that it seemed

As if the hair stood up on my head.

From going-down of the sun I have dreamed

That women laughing, or timid or wild,

In rustle of lace or silken stuff,

Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read

All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing

Returned and yet unrequited love.

They stood in the door and stood between

My great wood lectern and the fire

Till I could hear their hearts beating:

One is a harlot, and one a child

That never looked upon man with desire,

And one, it may be, a queen.

Penelope’s gown 

Long burned down

Screen Call

Screen Call

John Clare Stokes

Sunday nights we would sit out

on the porch listening to the 

drums of New Mt Zion thinking

it sounded as the Waziri in the 

Tarzan movie and we would 

shiver in the Sopchoppy heat. 

Eventually the tribe would 

disperse, and mamma  would

tuck us in early for school day

We were timid to venture the

next afternoon across the field

in the direction of Zion, fearing 

the hungry cannibals lurking.

We never ventured too far from 

sparse back porch, where we 

knew when time came, mamma

would call us home, safe from

the drummers of New Mt Zion 

ever waiting to carry us beyond

the call of mamma and Tarzan.

An overcoat of clay

 An overcoat of clay

Emily Dickinson 

Death is a dialogue between

The spirit and the dust.

"Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir,

I have another trust."

Death doubts it, argues from the ground.

The Spirit turns away,

Just laying off, for evidence,

An overcoat of clay.

Thus into the morning

 Itchetucknee 

Thus into the morning

Coming to the dividing mists

Awaiting patiently Charon

To ferry me over Styx.

Day three of the Itchetucknee journey at Natural Florida