Again, for the umpteenth time, they told me, you need therapy, why are you always
So angry?
Could it be
You are not seeved?
So I made an appointment
Secretly you see
I did not want anyone
To think I wasn't
Seeved
And needed secular
Therapy
He made me lay down
And I began to expound
It went back as far as
Sopchoppy
The day Janet Trice
Tried to drown me
And no one came to
Seeve me
So I'm not certain
If all along I'm alive
Or dead.
That cost me
One hundred and fifty.
When I was young
There were two
I wanted to become
Superman and Tarzan
Tarzan for Jane
And Superman
For X-Ray seeing
I would wear two towels
One a cape
One a loincloth
I had not the luxury
In the sixties
Of Lycra or Levitation
I had to use my
Imagination
They do not prefer me
In my right mind
Clothed and calm
They prefer me chained
To the tombs
Frothing and cutting
My flesh
Shoes of iron and brass
It was always Otis dream to be out at the
Williston airport flying
But his grounding came in the marrying
Of a domineering Dawson
Perhaps it was not always so narrow
They tell that once Pearl was a smoker
I'm not saying
But sometimes the giving up the
Card playing
The Saturday night dancing
The flying
Is but a long and terrible dying
Otis would come home sullen from
The Gulf station
Where the jovial jokes he was making
And silently listen
The sound of Pratt & Whitneys ringing
Over the Roloff preaching
It never quite sank in
And when the little Kelly took wings
On that Cedar Key bridge in that
Terrible Christmas of sixty-four
It all became too much for Otis
On that final day
Long before March of eighty
He topped off the Piper Cub
Checked the gauges by memory
Cut the joker wild from the deck
Did a Pelham jig
And flew off for eternity
Leaving Pearl
And the girls with
A fifty-one card pick up.
Sunday's I would sit stoic-like
Listening to the expounding upon
Romans
All the time the King James
Secretly open to the Song
Seldom turned to
Daydreaming upon
Foxes, the little foxes
Feeding among the lilies
Shadows fleeing away
Revealing roes
Flocks of goats
Teeth of sheep
Pomegranate locks
And I'd stop at those
Two twins
Returning to Romans
And the wages of sin
And sigh.
Again I dreamed I was running
with all my old friends
No incline too steep to not glide up
Strong and swift
And I would lift
the trophy overhead
Smile and wave to all those
not dead.
Once in dawns first light
we’d saddle up for the
long journey
silent and steady
through the planted pines
past the old homestead
to the fork that led to
Sanderson
but we’d continue on left
the log trucks would pass
we’d warn, one back
then settle again
abreast across the Gum Swamp
no need for drafting
As speed was not a factor
We’d make Taylor
for the fig newton and Pepsi
break so brief
soon to turn right then left
for the final long stretch
into the upper reaches of
way down South
to meet the cashier girl
without her own teeth
in her mouth
And we’d know we’d arrived
In Moniac
sweet Moniac
So far away now
I don’t think I shall
Ever make it back.
It’s how one measures time
What one awaits to find
Sabbath mornings with Tucker
By the time the clouds uncover
The hidden sinking moon
The rays shall melt the dew
Upon the St Christopher’s
In full bloom.
For my entire life I’ve yet to have bread pudding as Mrs Mary Rudd in Sopchoppy made for me. I’m not sure if my first Sunday School teachers recipe is exactly the same, but it came from Sopchoppy and that is as close to the source as possible. Bake it and bring it to me and if it’s as Mrs Mary’s, I will reward you generously.
I never tire of traveling the sixty miles the “back way” down to Williston. I recall the day way back in sixty seven we pulled in to the white wood parsonage on Noble beside the four goal court and the three story Methodist Church, school right next door. Coming from the crowded duplex apartment in Wilmore, Kentucky, we were in wonder.
Then years later, in the eighties, after we had moved to Lake City in seventy seven, I cannot describe the elation of meeting a nurse at Shands in Gainesville, inviting me down to teach her photography at her home in Williston. The little CRV covered the sixty doing eighty. And so the good times returned to Williston. I will always look forward until the day they take me out to Orange Hill, of returning to Williston, though lately it has been sad traveling.
The Methodist Church on Noble with the tree my father planted.
Next stop...the conductor called...forget me not...One and all...Faces pressed...Against glass darkly...Thinking of caresses...Whom we'd see....
John Clare Stokes
The smoke was in no particular haste
wafting low and hazily across the way
I was in no particular hurry
So I waited as it made its way toward
Olustee
I thought perhaps I’d follow his trail
see from where he was dwelling
perhaps the embers could yet be stoked
and we could again visit with the smoke
But the boys were now grown and gone
Just this old man in piney woods alone
No, don’t follow that trail down to the shore
Let it go, let it go, before it begins to whirl.
