I really dislike how
In this life
Our timing is so off
When my grandfathers
were in their prime
I was just entering
Didn’t really know them
Sketchy at best
Just a few summer days
with them
Then they were gone on
And so it is with
So many others
A day
A week
A month with some
One
Two
Years
And we part
I’m not certain
But it would be nice
In eternity if the timing
Wasn’t off
But then
It’s not earth
And it probably is a thing
We will not recall
It was the early sixties. I was around seven. It was before you went to the store and bought your butterball turkey. It is was Thanksgiving morning and we were going hunting. We went to Bert Roddenberry's farm, beautiful Wakulla bottom land where years later Joe Hutto would do his study of living with a flock of turkey. He told of the time with the turkey in the book Illumination in the flatwoods and later a PBS movie, My time with the turkey.
Daddy had his Parker double barrel 12 gauge with the ornately engraved barrels. It was given to him by a friend,Everett “Dutch” Fisher in Boyd,Kentucky while he was student preaching there.
We walked along the Creek bottoms listening and looking for signs. I knew not exactly what, deer or turkey, maybe black bear.
We came to a rise and daddy motioned me to be still. I do remember the time he let me shoot the gun, him holding it behind me, for the recoil would have knocked me flat.
I don’t recall if this was the time but we took aim at a turkey and to our delight hit it. We gathered it up and after showing Mr. Bert, took it home to dress it out. Daddy saved the legs for desk ornaments and the beard.
Upon dressing it mamma baked it and that Thanksgiving day we enjoyed the dinner we bought home.
perhaps the place of destination for me in the Lost in Levy is to the once vibrantly alive in old time gospel worship...the community church of Verbenadale. With each visit, the encroaching and eminent collapse draws nearer. This visit found someone posting no trespassing signs all about, in an effort to let the church building die in peace I suppose, keeping those who would pull a board or drape for memory sake. It looks as if the end is destined, that who ever owns the little church has no intention of restoring it. It has always been a source of consternation with me, that those with the funds, who hold these treasures in their grips, let them slip away, while we without, stand beyond the trespass line and watch. This is repeated over and over, with a little church at my home in Lake City, historical in value, used as a hay barn, no concern beyond feeding of the cattle. We did not linger long here today. The sun had already passed from its walls and on toward Otis Bells place it set, somewhere behind the Harris home and gone.
john clare
And from the blackness of darkness reserved forever
From the shadows of Remphan
Emerged a mysterious figure
Carrying in his right hand a star
And LO, this star which he held, went before him and came to
Rest where a young child lay.
And we redeemed
From Remphan rejoiced
Our wandering ceased
As he set his day star beside
This child to arise within
Our hearts.
john clare
Zackary, I trust you'd be pleased with Tiki,
Since you left I took her and
Stripped her down to the bare aluminum
Then tenderly applied two coats of moss grey
Not quite the forest in your glory sixties
But the choice of Landon
I do not think you ever met
And who like you I shall never forget
We mulled changing the name
But a thought came from afar
And so we made a stencil and with the pencil, with care traced Tiki exactly as you had in the sixties, maybe even the fifties.
Tiki has been with me nearly all my days, certainly all of Landon's
We no longer attach the old white five horse Johnson, bearing your last name, it rests in the shed, it's gas-oil long bled.
Days like these after the washing, I take Tiki out to the sunny spot in the yard. And I take turns sitting bow and stern.
And I lay back and I think of Zack, and Landon and his son
And the passing on of Tiki,
Of the stamp tattooed on her stern
Telling all where she has been
And we float atop the green ocean.
john clare
I hired a band of strangers
To rife through my things
With strict instructions
To spare nothing.
They began with the tools
Rakes, shovels, hoes
It all must go!
But I slipped in
And hid the dago
And the post holes
The Porter Cable
With a cord frayed;
They were dear to me
They were my daddy's.
And then the books
They all must go!
The novels, the letters
The romance
But I snuck in
To make hidden stacks
Of poetry
Of love letters
Old commentaries
John Wesley's journals
For they were dear to me
They long saved my sanity.
And then the bikes and boats
They all must go!
The Old Town, Mohawk,
Basso and Treks
Take them quickly!
But I loaded them
And hid the flotilla
Along the upper Suwannee
The peloton along the trail
covered in palmetto.
And then the cameras and
Photographs
They all must go!
The Nikons, the Canons
The Yashica, the color
And the monochrome
Burn them! And so they did
For I figured, they were only
Loved by me.
I did sneak in the little Canon.
What began as seven meaningless piles
By night mysteriously shrank
And all was as it was before.
I paid the band of strangers
With amended instructions to return
When I am cold and stiff
And all the stuff they could burn
But please, go up to the Suwannee and cut my flotilla adrift.
john clare
The ole gospel minister
steeped in the hard shell
way did all he knew to
crack the nuts in the
splintered pews.
It got so bad as one by
one the squirrels carried
the nuts away
that eventually
only one pew of a few
remained,
As far from
The pulpit
As possible.
Eventually ole Eubanks was
called on home to glory
and to this day
in September they gather
up at the ole Hopewell
pull the splintered pew to the back
to watch that burning cross
march right across the floor
cracking every one of them.
John Stokes
One day there shall be a gathering
Ten miles inland in the hammock
There the upright piano will be playing
In sight of the tidal creek
Helping the arriving off the boats
Signing the ledger, taking their familiar place
Some to the camp fires smoke
Others to palmetto to deer give chase
Each one vital for the gathering
Just as we remembered them
And as we join hands to sing
The source of our being here entering
No more asunder to part
It gives no more inward pain
But fellowship of kindred minds
Forever like it once was below.
Around the tables a hush ascended as Preacher began to speak.
If you signed the registry you were invited to return forever,
Who could dream so many were on the brink of never?
And so in memory we now gone extend a withered hand,
As the infant gazes into the camp fire and sees us stand.
Around the tables a hush ascended as Preacher began to speak.
If you signed the registry you were invited to return forever,
Who could dream so many were on the brink of never?
And so in memory we now gone extend a withered hand,
As the infant gazes into the camp fire and sees us stand.
Thanksgiving morning in Crawfordville and already the mill would be turning, squeezing out the sugar cane juice into the 5 gallon buckets with the burlap filter, to carry and pour into the sixty gallon Columbus iron kettle, twelve times, to make sixty gallons. The campfire would be stoked to stave off the morning chill. Mamma would be in the kitchen over the gas stove lit by fat lightered sticks, making pancakes and bacon, the aroma wafting down the dog trot hallway, waking those not already up. And so we made Ole Homewood Syrup. Near noon the first cooking would be poured into the Wild Turkey whiskey and various bottles and around one o’clock we’d pause and have Thanksgiving dinner beneath the pear trees surrounded by the grape vines and blueberries, rife with myriad memories.
