By nine

 He rarely stayed up past nine, usually by eight he would retire to the room with the A/C window loudly humming. In the front room we would be up watching TV, where I would move from the vinyl couch to his more comfortable recliner, usually changing the channel from CNN he always watched. In the kitchen mom would be washing dishes in the single cold water faucet sink or baking a blueberry pie from what we had picked earlier in the day. A pot of hot water was always simmering for the dishes on the back burner or a bath in the four leg tub. Before daylight he would be awake in the kitchen, lighting the gas stove to take the chill off with a fat lightered stick, getting ready to pour the pancakes on the stoves built in griddle, sprinkled with blueberries naturally.

Lewis and Goliath

 A boy and his dog

Lewis Stokes and Goliath

Glory

 The distant glory

I viewed from afar

The distant glory

Turned to get into the car

And it was right before me.

Song

 SONG(1)

In ignorance of the source, our want 

affirms abundance in these days.

Truth keeps us though we do not know it.

O Spirit, our desolation is your praise.

Wendell Berry

He goes free

 He goes free of the earth.

The sun of his last day sets

clear in the sweetness of his liberty.

Wendell Berry

Send help

 Send help

The famous last few croaks from a frog.

Three

 In a three foot circle

The moon appeared through the clouds

A red shouldered hawk hurried by

In the far distance a Swallowtail kite passed

Oh poo

 I said, oh great Bald Eagle

Bearer of deep wisdom

Can you enlighten me?

Oh well, think I’ll ask an Osprey.

For Noah

 For Noah

I saw Noah down at the Toyota

all dapper on a Monday with

bow tie and a hardback book

and he told me of a friend in

Iran who only took photos

wonderful photos from her yard

and I told him, it would not

disappoint me, if they confined me

to just the yard

and so the librarian who only lived

in yellow houses all his eighty

plus years opened his book

to read

and for some reason it made me

want to go and read some poetry

Who was my neighbor

 Who was my neighbor?

That morning while out visiting Azalea and Jasmine

Mrs Boyette quietly slipped by on her morning walk

She was the mother of Greg and Brian from whom we bought from Brian 

our home in ninety five

Often she would stop and come into the yard

and I’d show her the place where her granddaughters names are etched in the concrete

the pool where they swam and where some

trees once were

and I’d get to thinking of the other neighbors

Of what came of Mrs Thompson’s son on the corner

Of Mrs Duncan and her son now gone and her struggle to

keep going on alone

Of Paul and Lora and who moved in next to them

when the Geigers sold and moved on 

Of how the Hunters fare

And who is the current renter in the Kerns place next to them?

And if the fellow next to them, who was good friends with Mr Brannon now gone across the street

Still holds it against me I held his misdirected 

UPS shipment of a fender too long?

I must ask Barbara next door, she will know.

Daubers

 Daubers

John Clare Stokes

In the loft the old volumes found

Long out of print in dusky slow rot

Words gone unread with pages bound

by homes the daubers long forgot.

In the shed the old Briggs chugs

Pull rope frayed, varnished gas 

Fuel lines stopped up with mud

Dauber homes from the past.

In the barn the Columbus cooking vat

Georgia Red cane grinding to a halt

Tobacco barn rabbit burners sputter and spat

it’s tiered rows the daubers sought.

On the porch the bare bulb is dim

We chip and chip for a yellow glow

A muddy mist casts a shadow slim

Keeping daubers warm long ago.

So brilliant were our golden guilds

Forever and ever they would last

But patiently the daubers build

His kingdom clogging, long after

ours is past.

Sandra way

Sandra way

The ground orchids Sandra gave me bloom

Cat in the background with a winter soon

o’er as Litttle boy blue waited for the moon

with the camera he bought in June.