Johnclarestokes
I no longer chide the old tools
I pretty much let them rest
They’ve spent more than my life
Pruning, hoeing, sawing away
There are younger, sharper, stronger
tools that can do their job
I know one day the Felco will return
just as the LRS trowel eventually did
Somewhere it’s quietly reminiscent
of the hands before me that held it
I await the day, the stories he will tell
Of the muscadine arbors where
he once did dwell.
For years they dwelt beside the shady road
Kept the front yard swept
The petunias and posies in the clay pots
Dressed their best for worship down
At the Greater Poplar Springs Missionary
They were good times
Before the naming of the shady road
after Martin Luther King
When in the neighborhood before it
Was a hood the children were good
Minded daddy who was there
There with granny and her husband
Didn’t need no Lyndon Baines to
Rebuild this great society
But he tried as the old ways died
And so the remnants of how it was
Linger
Exposed for all to see
How warm the hearth used to be.
In the early hours of the deepest slumber
The little boy was wakened with a whisper
Calling him to come and join their number
It was a whisper once so familiar
But the little boy was fearful to obey
And told no one of this whispering friend
Lest they chide him as when in vision
He once said he saw angels visiting
The following evening at the same hour
Came the whispering one only much urgent
We haven’t time to tarry! For you I’m sent
Rise and we shall find the lost moments.
And so the boy arose and he did gladly go
With the night caller all was relived again
There was time with never a moment parting
He knew deeply all the passing scenes
The morning sun awoke him after many years
Was it a life upon lives lived so brief
Whatever it was the whispering one said
Eternity he was certain was but a continuation.
Each day I sit and to my mind say
This shall be the time I find
Words worthy to say I’ve arrived
At the mastery
That unknown to me in realms
Of hearts I’ve longed to enter
They are melting upon the words
Piercing that impenetrable barrier
It’s a futile flight of fancy
This brush with love and romance
Things not meant for the entering
With the backstroke of the thumb
Again I come to the edge of mastery
Change it to artistry
Insanity
Anything but mastery
I’m afraid if I arrived
I’d never journey near the sun again.
There is a place near the slow flowing Suwannee
Where the sand is white beneath palmetto thick
The track of the turkey and deer converge
beneath the shade of the grand cool mystic
In the impassible murky beyond the winding creek
The sound of rustling coming in the boggy way
It’s the piney wood rooters passing through
We scurry for a way of safety from the tusky
Up the lazy old oak into the abandoned stand
A pileated is startled to see the form of man
In time the beaded red eyed troop move on
All quiet resumes to consume the slough below
We saunter down not in a particular hurry
Wary lest the moccasin stirred from slumber
Strikes to count us among his number
Sure to follow close the well tracked trail out
Leaving this slough of the denizens of Suwannee
Past the sleeping foot washed ones of Prospect
There was no place upon earth we’d rather be
Than lost in the canopy of the primitive tree.
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
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.
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.
Daily the great sunflower would address the gathering, telling them which way that day they would turn, all in unison.
At Granny's
John Clare
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.
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.
