Wendell Berry
My old friend, the owner
of a new boat, stops by
to ask me to fish with him,
and I say I will-both of us
knowing that we may never
get around to it, it may be
years before we’re both
idle again on the same day.
But we make a plan, anyhow,
in honor of friendship
and the fine spring weather
and the new boat
and our sudden thought
of the water shining
under the morning fog.
Johnclarestokes
Years beyond my time in the garden
Some descendant of someone will
hear his father call the little one
to bring him the LRS trowel
and as another bulb is set in the soil
and the little boy returns to the nail
the LRS trowel
they will think what a fine tool it is
the little one piece relic
that fits perfectly in the hand.
The no blist’r trowel of
Luther Ray Stokes
Johnclarestokes
Mary Robinson Davis Rudd 1885-1960. My fathers first appointment to the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church was the tiny Mayberry-like town of Sopchoppy in Wakulla County in 1955. The panhandle town of under 600 was located on the banks of the crooked dark waters of the Sopchoppy River, which ran into the Oclockonee River, which ran into the Gulf at Panacea. My father preached one Sunday at Sopchoppy, then the next at the county seat of Wakulla in Crawfordville. My mother taught fourth grade at the nearby native stone school and during the day Mrs Mary kept me. Mrs Mary and Mr Emory Rudd lived next door to the church and parsonage on Rose Street in a wooden one story white cracker style house with the two front rooms off the dog trot ending in the rear kitchen. I loved the time with the Rudd's, looking forward each morning to Mr Emory showing me the rats he had trapped in the barn the evening before, saving me his match boxes and Prince Albert tobacco tins to play with. A good carpenter, Mr Emory made me a nice wooden high chair I could use to sit at the kitchen table with. Mrs Mary and we would walk about the yard and collect the eggs the chickens had laid in the barn and under the bushes in the yard. She would then make me my favorite food of all time, her special bread pudding. It had to be the eggs I always assumed, for even to this day, the consistency has never been matched. Maybe the ingredient was nostalgia. Mr Emory was a fiddle player in a band with his first wife Susie that played down at the skating rink across the street on the Sopchoppy river and he liked to rock a horsey me on his foot and sing an old dance hall tune, though I’m not too sure Mrs Mary approved. They had a nice front porch swing under the shady magnolia where I would lazily lay and watch as the occasional car would pass or listen to Mr Burches marching band down at the field practicing. I knew mamma would be coming soon to get me. One morning in 1960, mamma told me I would not be going to Mrs Mary's today. I remember looking out the window in our living room to their house and seeing a hearse. I had never seen one but instinctively knew. That evening mamma and daddy took me over to the house and there Mrs Mary was, lying in wake in the front room in the bed, hands crossed, sleeping it seemed. . It was one of the first death's I had seen, yet somehow I understood at the age of five. Soon after I went to stay with Mrs Willie Mae Porter and her daughters across the street, then the beloved Angeline “Plump” Donaldson, who kept me in our home until we moved to Monticello in 1963. But of all the dear ladies who kept me, none were loved more than Mrs Mary. My heavenly food I know will not be manna but Mrs Mary’s bread pudding.
I've this warped concept
Of one sitting out there
Hanging for dear life
Upon every word
Every scene I bring to her
Famished
Thanking me profusely
For rescuing her
From the rushing stream
Of pablum
But then I see
In reality
She's not reaching for me
It's the damn remote
On the TV
And the walking dead
Is coming on.
It was approximately six on a Thursday
The committee for the Good Housekeeping
Seal of Approval
Came knocking
They said according to their criteria
They had awarded us the
Good housekeeping seal of Approval
For being lovers going above and beyond
The call of duty.
The committee quizzically inquired
Is your wife at home?
When it was about that time
From the master bedroom
A voice was heard
Honey, who is it?
That the award was snatched from my hands
Rescinded in an instant moment
The seal upon the door scraped off
The subscription cancelled.
And To think
I was almost a Good Housekeeping lover.
We are mostly bound books
Unread upon the shelves
Your story not interesting
To any but you
And maybe if fortunate
One or two
Possibly your mother
The once lover
But that’s about it
I went in search of
The purple lined composition paper
You once copied out the prose upon
I could only find the
Marbled black and white books
Somehow the prose just wasn’t the
Same written in them
Something was missing
Your long hand
Your long flowing hair
Or so I convinced myself so.
What kind of mother
That she left her children
To another
I think it was little Elijah
Who suffered the most
His days mostly spent
Turning the cards
Placing the Queen
Just so
The queen he never did
Know
It shows
and I wake in the evening from dreaming
to see who may be slipping in
but it was just the wind slapping
I start to lift the latch to silent it
but I leave it open and return to bed
the breeze sighs and soon we return to dream.
In our home we had a screen we children
greatly despised, for it was in collusion with
Spring and no matter how soft our slipping
out, it would creak out our attempt to lift
the latch to escape the inside chores
mamma would inquire did you clean your room
or some such indoor imprisonment before
we could get past that infernal door of doom
and it was just as vigilant always on guard
when late in evening past curfew we’d try
to slip in not to wake mamma sleeping hard
but no matter how tenderly she wasn’t bribed
Mamma would wake and scold us to bed
Years passed and we left that ole home
Moved into fancy places without screens
Our children pretty much left to their own
I’d give anything just to hear that screen sounding
Joyfully telling mamma
Your little ones have come home again.
Screen Call
Sunday nights we would sit out
on the porch listening to the
drums of New Mt Zion thinking
it sounded as the Waziri in the
Tarzan movie and we would
shiver in the swelter heat.
Eventually the tribe would
disperse, sparing us to have
to tuck in early for the dawn bus.
We were timid to venture the
next afternoon across the field
in the direction of Zion, fearing
some hungry cannibals lurking.
We never ventured too far from
sparse back porch, where we
knew when time came, mamma
would call us home, safe from
the drummers of New Mt Zion ever searching for a meal.
It was pappa's favorite lounger
Long May Saturday's in Sopchoppy shade
He sat and pondered the sabbath sermon
Ants working in the sand providing the text
Long Mays since the dry rot took its toll
In March pappa went to the shades of light
The empty lounger to dark dauber homes
But toward the end of May
When thoughts of pappa held sway
We re-webbed the old lounger
Knocked away the dirt dauber nests
And fed them to the ants
That had come
From ole far away Sopchoppy.
