Half past Cheely

 Half past Cheely 

John Clare Stokes

Once there was a time upon which you could set your watch in Williston

When Nettie Griffin and later NE would arrive at the Chick Inn

When one of Charlie Lewis angels would be at the dry goods

Mrs Valerie Blackburn would begin painting with her pet mockingbird 

Travis Harris would pump some Standard premium for Chubby Pettaway

Doyle Crosby and Rossi Davis would arrive to repair the tube TV

Bruce Smith would grab his racquet from Crabtree’s and head up Noble

When the Seaboard would sound to slow the traffic down

When JH would come walking all about town.

It was time to…

Washed up

 Washed up

John Clare Stokes

Sometime in the moonless night

They washed up

High tide bringing them in

Deposited beside

Yesterday’s sand castle

Now more a little mountain

range in resemblance 

In the morning dawning

They seemed just sunning

but the dog knew better

The fiddler crab too

We could only surmise 

Rip tides

Castaways

Lovers

It’s the mystery of the sea

They looked so happy.

Buck fever

 two bucks worth

Fortunate I was to spot these two bucks lounging in the shade. Fortunate they were I only had camera in tow. I have for the record, though being a hunter of bucks in my teens, never killed one. After many years of therapy in the Betty White-tail Clinic,  I was finally cured of Buck Fever.

Merrily down the stream

 By paddle

By Evinrude

By saddle

By tube

We journey

Merrily

In dream

 In dream

by john clare

I cannot escape this stream

forever taking me further

down in the strong current

toward an open gulf 

depositing me to bob

in a tide of the moons clutch

this dream of making it

upstream just once

past the Dottie tupelo

we once measured 

exclaiming it was a record

tree way up here alone

on this upper Suwannee

sending her jams down

to sweeten the journey

jars upon jars of the 

spread upon the sands

to sustain those journey

struck longing to return

 to their Dottie tree.

Harlot Route

 Harlot Rout

Must the Harlots always win

Taking at will the fatted men

Making no distinction

Of age or ability 

To function

Just taking the money

Without compunction 

Must the harlots always win

Grinning from the screen

In unseen dens of home

Alluring the gawking in

Giving in to the sin

Must the Harlots always win

Taking all the men

Leaving them but shells

Of guilty Deacons 

Seeking victory over

The overwhelming odds

With God their conquerer 

Kicked to the curb.

Kentucky

 On the old Harrodsburg pike 

Coming out from Lexington into the pastures of

thoroughbred chestnut Churchill Downs dreamers

grazing, the Scotch Irish stonemason hewn fences snaking by Jessamine stream and rabbit trail beneath the bared mulberry and oak

trees of October, a welcome chill in the air, and it was good

to once again to be in search of those so missed in my old

Kentucky home.

Frosty hand

 With frosty hand 

Yes, the Year is growing old,

And his eye is pale and bleared!

Death, with frosty hand and cold,

Plucks the old man by the beard,

Sorely, sorely!

Auden 

From the Halloween series

Florida fall

 Florida’s fall

I’d say that Florida’s falls are the best of all

For while all flock to the mountains tall

with roads clogged with gawkers rushed

we can meander in the uncrowded brush.

To a garland maiden

 A poem-a-phrase (paraphrase) of Rev 12

Suwannee re-fall

 Suwannee re-fall

I recall the wondrous fall

When all the golden hues would draw

Me to walk along the crispy trail

Winding along a lazing Suwannee

Magic frame

 The magic frame

We are in our work

Our works in us

We are our work

Our work is us