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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Not just some bland fountain
Give me the old logo Logo did go
Logo was ok by me
And Charlie
Then PC
And NaaCP
But not Any
Indians
Or Gators
Screamed
Racism
Offensive
So Logo did go
Not some simplistic fountain
