Pulling up with Roscoe at the Watertown lake dock, we surveyed the vehicles to see whom we may recognize. One we miss seeing is the Nissan Frontier that meant Bill Chandler and Sally were already there from their Sunday morning ride through the Osceola Forest.
New friends now take the place that Eagle Eye once took. We know there is probably an Eagle out there in the trees along the bank, but without Bill to point them out, we don’t know.
Artist
Needs to carry
With him
His means
Of inspiration
For me
It's the old
Thirty-three
I lug along
It's portable
And I can wind it
Like the one in
Out of Africa
Even have a long
String
So when I'm
Between shots
Chimping
I can play
The Glen Miller
And soon
I'm jumping about
And cavorting
Imagination
Gone wild
Imagine that
The Dying Child
by John Clare
He could not die when trees were green,
For he loved the time too well.
His little hands, when flowers were seen,
Were held for the bluebell,
As he was carried o'er the green.
His eye glanced at the white-nosed bee;
He knew those children of the Spring:
When he was well and on the lea
He held one in his hands to sing,
Which filled his heart with glee.
Infants, the children of the Spring!
How can an infant die
When butterflies are on the wing,
Green grass, and such a sky?
How can they die at Spring?
He held his hands for daises white,
And then for violets blue,
And took them all to bed at night
That in the green fields grew,
As childhood's sweet delight.
And then he shut his little eyes,
And flowers would notice not;
Birds' nests and eggs caused no surprise,
He now no blossoms got:
They met with plaintive sighs.
When Winter came and blasts did sigh,
And bare were plain and tree,
As he for ease in bed did lie
His soul seemed with the free,
He died so quietly.
Seth Thomas
Has determined
To stop perpetually
At a half past
4:36
We have no key
To revive him
So twice a day
We visit him
And remind him
He is right on time.
It's the least
We can do
For all the times
He kept us
On time.
It was a year after the passing of my Uncle William Clark Stokes, when in 2017, in honor of our Stokes relatives having a reunion in Homewood, Mississippi on this day, I displayed the remnants of my grandmother, Ethel Marie Wike Stokes, born Jan 28, 1899 in Lexington Co., SC and died Aug 1, 1937 in Homewood, Mississippi. My cousin Ethel Jeanne Bradford Rowland, the daughter of Esther Irene and Joe Parks Bradford, her mother my daddy’s sister, gave me the shoes, a shawl, leather gloves and her ponytail at our last years reunion. Esther and Earnest William were married on Dec 18, 1914 and had five children, Earnest Curtis, James Marzelle, Hazel Marie, Luther Ray, my father and Esther Irene, Jeanne's mother. My mother was the last link to this original Stokes family as Earnest remarried Bernice Beatrice Boykin 17 Feb 1939 and had William Clark, Jimmy Boykin, Billy Ferrell and Mary Carol, of which only Mary still survives. Ethel Marie's father, Jacob Wike was a Lutheran minister, my father and Billy Ferrell were Methodist ministers.
Of the
Stokes Reunion
Four years ago
the remnants of the
House of Burgundy
Met in the backyard of one dawg
Down in the hail state
Of Mississippi
To lament upon the latest
Removal from the series
By some stealing Louisiana Tigers
To gnaw upon batter fried crappie
From the
Reservoir
And talk of boorish things
Like the State of the nation
The stock market
The retirement
For they lately
have no leader to turn to
To get his wise perspective
Upon the situation
It doesn't matter
The Master ingrained in them
Eternal confidence
That In the next season
The end all of all seasons with
The latest batch of signees
That Bulldog
Nation would rise so far above
This backyard in
Hattiesburg
You could see the lights
Of Dudy Noble
From even the darkest parts
Of Oxford
Awakening even
The Hail State prophet
Holed up in a Homewood cave
Awaiting the second coming.
wrote of the summer lilies
I went to Emily for surely Emily
told of the bee among the lilies
I went to Thoreau for surely Thoreau
lived less desperate by the lilies
At last
I went to you for surely you
would abide with me in the lilies.
John Clare Stokes
He came upon the keys to the garden
Tucked long away in the tin box
Tarnished and dusty with the closed
lost locks
In brittle leather pouches on soft brass
hooks hanging
Once upon the hinges the gates swung wide
the ole blue Ford tractor passing
through the unlocked gate to unturned fields
Neatly hung in the shed the
tools to abundant yields
the little boy hoeing hard at the Gardeners side
And he would send the boy with the keys
the Gardener waiting patiently
in the furrowed row
To the little one which keys he must know
his first prayers, “dear God, the Gardener
depends upon me!”
And with a sweet click and quick return
He ran with the right tool for the seed
The Gardener pleased with the
little boys deed
As wide eyed there was so much to learn
And so the keys to the garden are in his hands
the old Blue tractor waits for him to
find the key
But the gate is long gone along
with even the property
The Gardener rests in the cool of eternity
I trust the Master understands.
The wonderful journey with Chagall
(Not the photo entered in the show)
