Bless the migration

 Blessing of the migration 

Halpatter statue by Ann Optenorth 

In Alligator Park

Cold dreams

 Cold Dreams

John Clare Stokes

The old upright was a place

Of delight

By the soft glow of night

She would reflect upon

Where she had been

Before the labored breathing

Confined to the home

Each little magnet 

A story of a place

Routes she never again

Would trace

But in her cold dreams

She was traveling

Breathing free

Sunday C

 Key of C

John Clare Stokes

Some Sundays

Mostly

I do not want to go

Hear your hollered hallelujah 

As if Holier is more than me

Quietly out of that

Spirit

Some Sundays

For an hour

Can we just dwell

Upon the Key of C

Struck softly and tenderly.

Ground Floor

 Ground floor

John Clare Stokes

Aren’t these the days

When we lament

We shall not make it 

Above the ground floor

We want to climb

The stairway to Heaven

But something seems missing

Holding us down

We chalk it up to flesh

To some transaction in Eden

We don’t look to the bleeding

From the basement

Stick figures

 Stick figures

I think I was amiss

In the thinking

I’d happened upon

A kindred spirit

John Clare Stokes

I think I’m ivory billed

Heading for extinction 

Stick figures dancing

Across your canvas

Perhaps there dwells

Beyond one fully evolved

In the dimension 

I dwell in

Peace of wild things

 One of my favorites 

The Peace of Wild Things

By Wendell Berry

Artist Kari-Lise Alexander

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

From Eliza Beth Gaines

Southern sew

 The pluck of the Southern men in gray  

The Southern women in homespun array  

The hands that mend as they pray  

The Southern cause to win the day

Dreaming buffalo

 The Bison were passing

Or was I dreaming

I was an ancient Indian

In the twilight hunting

Haiku sway

 Haiku sway

Quietly now

The passing begins

Enter now

As time suspends

Entry of memory

 Entry point

John Clare Stokes

Savor when we dreamed of walking

down to the out going tide

finding the first shells waiting 

with little ones at our side.

Full circle

 Full Circle

Oleanders

The little boy knew one who longed

for the bouquets from a long gone son

So he went down to the year 1888

To gather some in her longing state.

Oleanders

Vincent Van Gogh

1888

“Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painters soul.”

April in February

 Crossroads 

John Clare 

Do you recall the early times

when you were sort of mine

The day languishing on

awaiting to walk you home

Today to the memory

I ordered some thin mint

Girl Scout cookies 

The little wild eyed beauty knew

She saw right through me

To the corner of Lexington and Main

and I didn’t have to explain

It was April in February 

Not at Winn Dixie

But Fitches IGA.