From the front room office window
From the slats open just a crack
The far rumbling of the old engine
I know from where that sounds coming
Can even tell it's loaded down
Dick Orander taking us home
Quickly, lift me to the curb
Give to me the silver script passage
Can't miss the Northfork-Crumpler line
Coming for me one final time.
You'd think in our advanced social media world
If we wanted to get our message across
It would be marvelously easy
But I may as well be in the 19th century
Quill pen dipping in India Ink
Scribbling upon fine parchment paper
Rolling the note into a corked bottle
Casting it to the outgoing tide
Awaiting your finding it on your far shore
Going through the same process
To reply
Before we die
For what is any different?
Zuckermen and his analytic logarithms
See to it
Our notes in our bottles
Bobble endlessly out to sea
Unread
Unseen
In obscurity.
They are tearing down old Williston High and Elementary this week. No one seems to mind, they have a new school out on 27. Somehow I mind, in a sentimental manner. Things done to Williston, once my hometown, still my hometown, still affects me. The First Baptist Church. Why did they keep the atrocious Neal building and build the uber ugly metal building beside it? The long abandoned Winn Dixie shell on 121. Bulldoze it how about it? The entire downtown parking on the store frontage. Why didn’t they tell DOT to shove it, build a bypass if you must. The city hall. What took so long? Top of hill. Why the empty field so long where Holiday Inn stood. Hospital. How it came to be closed a crying shame.
Chick Inn, Carse Oil. More sad Shame. I’m sounding way too negative on my town, there have been nice improvements. I just hate to come every Sunday and see the state it’s in, compared to my memory. I really dread coming this week and seeing a missing school. And finally, has Pesso been tar and feathered yet? And will someone run that Devils Den bunch out so we can skip school again there?
Mothers knees braced
Kept me tall
Safe from fall
Today I stand
The strong man
With burdens my own
And though I am grown
Far from home
When I'm alone
Not so strong
In my weakness I see
My mothers knee
I don’t think Bob Jones ever knew I snapped the Kodachrome photograph of him intently focusing and composing on the composition in the Nantahala. Each October for several years we would travel up in his VW orange and white van to photograph fall colors, camping along the way. I’d usually have already found my shots and I’d be waiting, and waiting for Bob to set up the tripod, focus, check the Gossen meter, focus, check the angle, focus, set the Nikon F aperture, focus, check the shutter, focus and take the “damn!” photo.
And we’d move on and repeat the scene. I never saw that many of Bobs photos from those trips. Sadly, due to his trailer not having A/C, mold formed eventually and ruined them, including his lenses.
The saddest day came, when I went to visit Bob, his dementia advanced, he asked me, “Didn’t we used to take photos together?”
Yes, Bob, and I’d give anything to wait for you to focus that scene again.
And the Word became cherished
And was read among us.
Even dwelt inside some of us
And we beheld it wondrously
As e’en from the Father o’er us.
Falling Creek Chapel
Johnclarestokes
I dreamed again I was in high school
on Coach Robinson’s basketball team
composed of all brothers and sisters
I wasn’t a starter as I sat on the bench
eating pizza and complaining about
the starting five not working for a shot
just tossing the ball up
At some point my name was called
when I went in I envisioned being the hero
but I could barely dribble, throw or shoot
the round ball
at some point toward the end the other
team left the court and it took me five attempts
to make a layup unguarded
we were still down by twenty
Everyone was lining up shaking hands
I was still playing
trying to win.
Marvelous night for a moon swoosh
Johnclarestokes
Yesterday I heard the sirens heading your way
Later I learned you had fallen and couldn’t get up
And I was saddened by my long ago prophecy
That this fall began when we broke up
It wasn’t so much that being mine was grand
That immunity from distant falling was granted
It was best we never made a home stand
That the Passion flowers were never planted
We went our separate ways and faded in memory
Occasionally I would ask whatever came of you
Someone would vaguely say she seems happy
I’d nod and think of sirens flashing red and blue
Can rehabs mend the lovers lives long fallen
Prophecy fulfilled can be such a cruel thing
In the night I’m awakened by your frantic calling
I lay there and count the haunted rings.
Johnclarestokes
The days have come where I am thankful
for some of my most memorable times
the camera was along to preserve the day
the very place where we’d sit and would
barely say any words, deep in thought
of those things growing, those lives going
those things coming to break the silence.
For now I’ve come to live long enough
that these things are gone from there
I’d be hard pressed to stand upon the
spot we once sat in the afternoon sun
the gardening done, the supper simmering
the tinge of fall in the air, the hum of a
hymn upon the wind, the silence listening.
Father and Son on a Sunday morning
Crawfordville
Kodachrome
1980’s
John Clare Stokes
They say the Suwannee is a living entity
That if you stand silent and listen
You can hear the respirations
Faint as a wisp at times
Breathless gasping loud at others
When I stand in the places others stood
I sense the river continues their breathing
Keeping the memory of their lives alive
And I exhale slowly and the river
Takes my breath.
Judy Hancock by Suwannee
John Clare Stokes
There is never a rhyme or reason
Adequate to explain His coming
He comes at the opportune
He comes at the inopportune
When least expected
When most expected
Today He beckoned above
The First Baptist steeple
Just as the insurance man
Was lured at the same time
Mt Tabor
No throne of comfort for the minister
All sat in splintered humility
The old rail not a pulpit separation
Just a hitching post of deep contrition.
