Tired

 Mighty tired coach 

With the loss

With the loss

With the loss

When was the

Winning season

Never made state

Never will

The third place yellow district ribbon fades 

Perry of PK Young

Forever winning

Winning 

Winning 

The hurdle race

Resonates

 Resonate

What moves me, does not resonate beyond me. Again I must learn, unless you were there, or knew the story, it’s meaningless and simply seen as a ho hum photo to which to move on upon.

One was the Negro League Dugout in Archer. Sundays on our way to Williston we would have to slow as the road side was teeming with spectators. Now but a memory.

Two was the Jones farm in Trenton. I was asked by the late Tom Jones, a chiropractor in Williston if I would make a painting of his father. I was walking about the farm and the shoes were on the back porch. I later did the painting which Tom never saw, having been murdered. Years later a grandson saw the painting online and purchased it. I am glad it found a home. 

Golden Days

 Golden Years

johnclarestokes 

The father recalls the golden years

Of a son that once lingered near

Of a father matching his gait

Pausing often to wait

Keeping the son in sight

And they would stop and listen

Poised in aim at any rustling 

Hid in the tree boughs watching

And the crows would alarm at the sound

On the father and son looking down

The father would whisper now son

And the son would squeeze the trigger on the gun

And the father would say well done

Beaming with the bagging of the bushy tail

Of golden years the story we often would tell.

Master

 Daily the great sunflower would address the gathering, telling them which way that day they would turn, all in unison.

At Granny’s

 At Granny's

John Clare

Stokes

Pappa she kept tightly in the urn upon the mantle place 

Great Granny's wooden leg propped open the bedroom breezeway

Nights I'd try and get to sleep quickly

Before granny came hobbling with lace over her face

Through the cracks and chinks the wind whispered

Who is that lying my the feathered bed

Do we wake for another now dead

Now it's just the wind I was assured.

Then from the Florida room a fiddle 

Upon the cool hard pine floor a tapping

Someone in there an old beat keeping

Is that you, Mr Emory?

I dared not wake to peek in.

By morning rooster waking I asked

Granny did you enjoy last nights company

She smiled and dipped some snuff slowly

Went about the early days tasks humming

Seems we weren't in this place by ourselves

I eventually grew accustomed to pappa on the shelf

Great granny letting in the cool wind

Never invited but I even looked 

Forward to the midnight fiddling to begin.

Jordon

 Salute to the Army’s 250th and our son Jordon Curtis who enlisted in the Army, then re-enlisted in the Space Force currently.

On the wings

 On the wings of a Snow White kite

He sends His pure delight

With a sign from the height

On the wings of a kite.

Three things

 There are three things which are too

wonderful to me, yea, four which I know not:

The way of a kite in the air

The way of a serpent upon a rock

The way of a ship in the midst of the sea

And the way of a man with a maid.

Hummingbirds travail

 Hummingbirds travail

The ever working ones in the yard 

Isn’t life for them trying enough

To contend with wasps rough

enough to put a sting quite hard

Rails to boat tails

 From Rails to Boat tails 

Waiting for Magritte 

Johnclarestokes 

Does everything align to your reason?

Must there exist rational explanation for everything?

If I showed you a mystery we shall not all sleep

Would you lie awake nights your soul to keep?

The silver queen

 The Silver Queen

Johnclarestokes 

He would stop along the way to some humble 

abode and ask intently why no interest

Why she had land and horses and the best family

Are you just of another persuasion?

And she’d assure him not and pray just someway

to get away

For the evening was coming

When under the cover of darkness

to slip away and meet the Silver Queen

to lie in the watermelon fields and listen

as the coyotes and hounds called to her

The girl with the horses long since sleeping

dreaming of her coming preacher boy

but he never came 

For he too was under the spell of the 

Silver Queen

And it wasn’t until years later

The grandson came

But by then the old preacher 

Upon his dying bed

could only gaze into his eyes 

without a word

That’s the price one pays

to give his love to the Silver Queen

her gestation measured in years 

the grandson exiled to her island.

Was a lover

 Yesterday 

Johnclarestokes 

Four swallowtail 

Above me did sail

Above me did sail

Today

Three buzzards 

Above me did hover

Above me did hover

Tomorrow

Two cardinals 

Above me will discover

Above me will discover 

Forever

This man

Below them was a lover

Below them was a lover