Friday, May 23, 2025

Sting of Don


 Sting


That day in the bow

You paddled through

The low

Lying limbs stirring

The paper wasps

To swarm all around

Him as he passed

In the stern

I was watching him

Fighting

Swatting 

Diving in

I was inwardly

Laughing

At your unknown

Plot of his misery

Today

I had compassion

On a paper wasp

Who was drowning

In the pool

Certain he would

Show gratitude 

For my rescuing him

He stung me

In my misery

Without mercy

Re do

 The second take 


Never quite satisfied 

I returned to the scene

To try and capture something missing

Angle


Perspective 

Light

So elusive to align

I’m certain this shall not be the last time

Returning

On line

Times we wish we could go back to the time when this was the only on line.


 

Theives still free

 Creative thievery 


Who would steal a poor photographers $50 bill? I can't imagine. Hope you needed it worse than I did.

This was from 2017. I have a good idea who the thief was. The same person to this day steals the pain pills from her mother. 



From afar


 It’s not so much a trumpet sound

Loud and resounding an end

More along the clarinet or French horn

Muted, mournful, longing

At the same moment bringing

Joy unspeakable

Bend low path


 Bend low trail 


Often the best paths

Are the ones requiring

A bent low stance

Down on the level

Of the animal

The ones deemed

Lower than man


Down there low

God makes a kind of

animal-like sound

Unknown to

Standing tall man.

Leopard moon


 When have l last looked on

The round green eyes and

The long wavering bodies

Of the dark leopards of the moon?

Yeats.


Photo impression

Leopard frog under eclipse moon

Thursday, May 22, 2025

Spare him


 In the presence


How do you know

If in presence of royalty 

You are?

The Monarch says

Off with your head!

The Viceroy says

To the dungeon til dead!

The Queen says

Spare the lad instead.

Williston women


 Williston women


When I came to Williston from Kentucky in sixty seven, I was not aware of the caste system. I would date some of the women, but they would eventually break up. Soon they'd end up with one with land, or road construction machines, pine trees, cattle, money , you name it,but not one who wrote poetry. They knew who to marry. One went for a spreader of fertilizer in fields, another for one with foundry connections. They knew who to cast for. I was an outsider. Little did I realize one little lady, an oil painter on Noble, had prayed that I would marry a Williston girl. It seemed an impossibility to break into the Mortgage Hill Caste system. She eventually died and I in seventy seven moved away. But God honors the prayers of his artists and at the late age of thirty three, I married a Williston girl named Melanie.

I guess it was mercy I did not marry one in my own futile efforts , as I'd no doubt be spreading fertilizer today counting my money.

Shoals Deliverance


 Muscle Big Shoals of the Suwannee River

It was right out of Deliverance

With the roar of the shoals

I stood right above the shirtless

Shot him three times 

Left him for alive 

He never knew I spared his soul....

Dew and Moo


 Teach me to temper the glory

I place upon the morning rays

For every fence that drips of diamonds

For every cow I bow and praise

The halo of light confusing me

Until your shadow falls

And then I see

Dew and moo's mocking me.

As grass


 As grass


Grass is a glorious thing

an endless expanse swaying

in the gentle summer wind 

but for a season then comes

the sickle of the harvest

to ovens the grass to bread

the man but for a moment fed.