The morning my mission was to procure coffee creamer from the DG. I struck out too early and so I wound up at the lake, where I proceeded to determine to out wait a red shouldered hawk perched, catching him lifting off. He won. After over an hour, when as usual I took my eye off him, he flew. About that time the text, where are you?
Going on hawk time, my bad.
JohnClare Stokes
I know that dwelling beneath
The ground, are the thriving,
Bustling silent towns,
The grist mill grinding up
The corn, the calves upon
The hill being born,
Brick makers firing up
The kilns, the black smiths
Pounding on the steel
The one law in the town
To keep silent
For thieves are seeking
The hidden silver
DeSoto's are ever digging
For the hidden gold
Keep the secret
Of your borders
Worship quietly you
Saturday Adventist
Be as the Methodists
Stoic and silently staid
Not giving away
The place where the
Seminole would wade
To the hidden glade
In silence the shaped note
Song sung.
From lips of those
Told o'er and o'er
Keep silent
Keep still
Until they pass beyond
The ever grinding mill.
Do you recall the first place we stopped
On that Wacahoota trail of Phlox?
It was beyond my every imagining
Seeing one as you there gathering
For in all my former Thoreauian desperation
My only flowers were pressed in books
Drying.
Another collaboration with a Robert Jones painting of his parents and my Phlox. It was Bob who was with me on the trip to St Marks where I found the note in the bottle that soon led to Melanie.
"Don't slam the Screen door!" "Close the screen door!" "Don't poke holes in the screen door!" All the old homes had screen doors, the early air-conditioning. It allowed you to keep the main door open so you could hear what was going on outside. Who was driving up, what the children were doing, what the dogs were barking at. I think screen has to rank in the all time top ten invention list for old time southern homes.
She wanted all surrounding
To know in uncertain terms
She had arrived in spades
Far surpassing even her family’s
Modest spread
She owned the cattle upon
A thousand hills
Or was it a thousand cattle
Upon a hill
She lost track
And mostly
No one was counting but her.
The tricked out raggedly low rider
Sedan with the booming nigga
Rap of hating whitey pulled up
Rather rapidly to the dock
Where three black teens with
A package wrapped in a grocery
Plastic headed toward me
I gave out a kind of inner groan
For what was to transpire
When all they wanted to do
Was release the box turtle they
Found on the road
They asked me if I got paid
For what I did
Got back in the hate whitey booming
Low riding two door and were gone
Somewhere a land turtle down below
Was trying to figure how so suddenly
His world went from crossing the road
To escaping from drowning .
I just quizzically said
Yes nigga
Why ain’t whitey paid?
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
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
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.
Loud and resounding an end
More along the clarinet or French horn
Muted, mournful, longing
At the same moment bringing
Joy unspeakable
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.
