Wet streams

 Wet Streams

In this dream

I was paddling

Up a stream

It seemed

So real.

Before the fall

Before the fall

We envision ourselves forever with the young

The race we can still line up and run

And maybe some are given feet ever strong

Others, we are just grateful to limp home. 

Little Shoals

Suwannee

A crossland

 A cross land

Johnclarestokes

Once we were a cross land

All up and down the highways and byways 

the crosses by churches, in fields, at

intersections, upon hills, in valleys stood

then gradually something changed

the crosses were no longer maintained 

they began to fade, to rot, to fall

to lay in abandon 

until all throughout our land

We have become nothing but a 

cross land.

Sunday sonnets

 Sunday Sonnets 

Do you recall in the First November 

When recovering I talked you into hiking

Embarking upon the ferry to Cumberland 

Still so weak from the long nights plight.

Sunday’s as these I sit beneath the pine trees

Recalling those first slow steps after the fall

Breathless lying on the blanket by the sea

Giving thanks for His taking us through it all.

When again in fall Cumberland Islands calling

Be patient with dreams beyond our span 

And pray we never tire of the gentle drawing

Just to lay again where our dreams began.

Sunday sonnets do not often now come

Sunday sonnets for lovers who so fleet did run.

And so rest I

 And so I rest within 

the glory

And let the light

tell it's story

In the dark

of the cold wilt

To despair the

tendrils tilt

Still, still we dwelt

For the light felt

The opening of the glory

The entering of rest.

Martins mail

 Martins mail

Martins Taylor of route seven

When was the last time

You checked your mail?

That moon you ordered

Arrived at last

The song you needed

Came 

The paperboy even

Delivered the good news

For a change

Martins Taylor

Check your mailbox

Honor due

 Honor due

Oh estranged one

my mother loved her

more than her own

daughter

and you have the

audacity

to not honor her

by being as one dead?

You step upon the

Grave of your

grandmother

With every passing

Day you let this

Go on

Come home

October Over

 October over

The month of birth and death is gone

Into November we are moving on 

Time for the cane grinding to begin

time to guard the persimmons ripening

from the nocturnal possums 

time to boil the Mason jars for the syrup

time to check the Gravely for stale gas 

Making sure it still cranks on

Thanksgiving morning

time to send someone down to the IGA

for the pancake batter and bacon

we don’t won’t to subsist upon cereal

when the time comes

He walked

 "He walked all the way, and arriving in the evening of a beautiful day, ascended the steeple of the old church, just when the sun was sending his last rays over the surging billows of the North Sea. The view threw Clare into rapturous delight. He had never seen the ocean, and felt completely overwhelmed at the majestic view which met his eyes. So deep was the impression left on his mind that it kept him awake all night; and when he fell asleep, towards the morning, the white-crested waves of the sea, stretching away into infinite space, hovered in new images over his dreams."  from Edge of the Orison by Iain Sinclair.

Tough Tuesday

 Tuesday is the toughest day for me

For by Tuesday

I am weary of the bad poetry I forced wrote on Monday

And this magnesium citrate

kind of churning deep down

tells me, purge it do anything but do not post it

Tuesday is a good day to take

a long journey

to carry the contents far into the forest to dump the 

rhymes beside some 4 way

Intersection, for all to smell,

where the vultures can have their fill

But I never will

It's far an easier task to simply deposit them along the wall of a long dead poets 

place.

Illumination

 Illumination

Illumine me Lord

With just a lux of

Your great light

That Falls so bright

Upon this child

Fair hair Clara

Of the Crumpler 

Hollow 

Illumine me Lord

With but a flicker

That I may

Know your light

As she has worn

So wonderfully

Illumine us Lord

That we may know

The love of light

She has known

Precious this child

Embraced in your

Illumination.

Farewell to a frog

 Farewell to frog

You thought the lake was inclusive

Big enough to hide you in

All was swell in this lovely swamp

Why it’s such a nice day for sunning.