Lately I howl less at the rising moon
Oh I still sit in a quiet swoon
It's just after so long pining
There is a pathos in the whining
Or the praying
Or the wishing
Or the frail hope
So it's just a mindless watching
As if by some miracle
The moon winking
Would grant the thinking.
Her last words were,
"Please don't let the camellia's die"
So I resorted to alchemy
Secured a leech from the pond
To bleed the plant of the
Poison blood
Proud in my dark
Gardening knowledge
Smoking incense sticks
Placed in a circle round
The possessed plant
Chanting from the
Emily poetry book of
Inspircantations
(For she was first a gardener)
And only wrote
To keep the Camellia
From dying.
Williston
John Clare Stokes
The boy was the high school quarterback
Like his father before, his life was sports
Figured he’d graduate and go down in lore
Join the pantheon and hear no more
But as the shepherd tending o’er the flocks
Plans from eternity were in the works
And like his father before, delivered from the drink
This Red Devil athlete with Christ did link
They say it came by hearing Billy Graham
It’s still a mystery how these men the Lord found
But those teens who gathered in their home
Were hungry for what this athlete had to say
The call was strong, the direction soon came
And the Methodist boy set out for Lakeland
To return to sit at the feet of Brother Rowell
And constantly abide through every trial
With so many blessed songs, it wasn’t long
Now the once mischievous boy was ministering
to the throng
Upon the hill, with the cross all could clearly see
A little Wes following the steps of a John Wesley.
Wes Smith
Williston Church of God
The tired ole Primitive campers
With the dirty, callous feet
Would stoop and truly weep
Following the Lord's example
Soon came the time shares
The vrbo’s by the beaches
Feet pedicured by Vietnamese
The ole Primitive Campers
Forever the ole bunions to bear.
I paused by the wet field
For there pranced an old friend
As from my gaze he ran
My eyes with tears filled
The wind in his white mane
That unmistakable rocking
I know it was him I was seeing
Bought to life again.
Sure the oak is now long fallen
With all the fond recallin'
Firewood to warm another
Boards for some deck afar
It ain't doing a lick of good
To ponder on the what should's
The oak bid it's time shadin'
So quit the pity pond wadin'
No one even cared that ole oak
Meant so durn much to
Only This ole Stok.
A blazing star
It wasn't how far
To see this Swallowtail
But how near
It was all along
John Clare Stokes
Nothing saddens me greater
than to walk among the headstones
and know only born and died on
with maybe a line of scripture
Would there a writer for every soul
to etch a book upon their stone
for when in the cemetery we roam
the details of a life we’d know.
All deserved more than a dated line
Many a novel lies never to be read
So many pages among the dead
Oh if only scribes we could find.
Price Creek Cemetery
~ Malcolm Muggeridge (Painting by Pat Rocha)
It's never the bruises or the cuts
We recall
It's the kisses and caresses that
Linger
And hit us brutally
Bruising and cutting to the
Bone
Flaying the heart open upon
The slab
Long after the lovers gone
Robert Frost had a knife
Cold steel taking life
Robert Frost went fishing
Not for the eating
But simply for the
Separation
One side gulping
The other flapping
Robert Frost without a heart
His knife sharp
Herons staring
At the gore
And what for?
Separation.
Stupid
Separation.
