Roline

 Way way up

It was in the summer of ten

And we had survived the winter of nine

So we journeyed up to the remote Roline

Sissy the dog with us for the first time

From a year spent mostly kneeling and prone

To a year just to be grateful to be home

Who dat?

 Who that tappin’

John Clare Stokes

Today I stood in the same spot

Trusting in position 

To catch the Spirit blowing

Knowing He comes when we

Least expect or deserve

Not in the assurance 

Not in the offering

Not in the praying

Not in the word proclaimed

And I was grieved

Moving into the aisle

Turning to leave

When suddenly I turned

A tapping within 

Welling up 

He was there in it all

Just a step from where

He last called.

Stuffy’s

 The John Franklin"Stuffy" Stewart home on Hernando and St.John's streets. Stuffy was born Jan.31,1894 in Jasper, Florida and died  Dec. 30,1980 in Lake City,Florida. Stuffy was a professional baseball player who played second base from 1916 to 1929 with the Cardinals, Pirates,Brooklyn Robins and Washington Senators. He was called the greatest base stealer in Southern Association history when the Senators brought him up in 1925. In the 70's when Stuffy lived in the home, it was so overgrown by vines that you could not see the house from the street. Photo by John Stokes.

Johnson’s

 Johnson's hydrangea

John Clare Stokes

Once we remarked what a lovely display

Old Southron charm, wistful to see

Gone the old ways of the Johnson's

Hydrangeas witness this fallen kingdom.

Rode the horsey

 Rode a horsey

John Clare Stokes

The old shop on the road to Bell closed at last

Sad the case when the sons move from the past

The little horsey once happily ridden lingering

anticipating the return of the son never coming.

Browns

 Farewell Henry Brown

Intaglio etching 

Farewell, old Coila’s hills and dales

Her healthy moors and winding vale’s:

The scenes where wretched Fancy roves,

Pursuing past, unhappy loves!

Farewell, my friends! farewell, my foes!

My peace with these, my love with those

The bursting tears my heart declare,

Farewell, the Bonnie banks of Ayr!

Robert Burns

It was this week in 1976 we were in Homewood, Mississippi for one of our too few family reunions. It was the last time we would ever see

many, it would be years before we saw many again. 

My cousin Jeanne Bradford Rowland would know the relation, but before we left to return to Williston with mamma, Lewis and Goliath in the Dodge van, we stopped at William Henry and Juliah Hettie Browns farm. I gathered they were

a huge influence in my fathers growing up in Homewood. Henry at the time was 81. He would pass on ten years later. Hettie was 79 and would live until 1992. Daddy would live until 2011, mamma 2017.

These are the lost stories of a past I wish I had somehow recorded, heard and known. 

All that’s left is a love etched in a zinc plate.

Seeved

 Seeved 

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.

Two towel man

 Two towel man

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

Gadarene

 Gadarene

They do not prefer me 

In my right mind

Clothed and calm

They prefer me chained

To the tombs

Frothing and cutting

My flesh

Grounded

 Grounded 

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.

Song of Solemn

 The Song of solemn

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.

In dream

 In dream

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.