Pelicans and heron

White Pelicans chilling 

While the great egret looked on with what looked like disdain, the Pelicans went about their catching and herding fish.

 

Creation of color

The creation of color

Deep within the without

Form or void

A voice heard calling 

Come forth

A creation of my own making in PicArts and PSExpress on the iPhone.

Written in tannic

 Written in tannic

Times we’d come to the slow ebbing Suwannee 

and in the foam from shoals read the writing

of our lives fleeting and what was to be

thankful to Him the source of our being.

Not a winner

 Make no provision

Last evening plans were set in motion, Monday we’d call in and travel to Tallahassee. We promised to tell no one, letting all keep thinking they were better off than we were, not needing our company, and we didn’t need any faux friends. 

But lo, in the scan, it was determined, man’s plans are not in Gods hands, and so, I’ll see you at work on Monday, yes, you’re still better off than me, and I’ll keep the same friends closely.

Time to go

 As an egret lifts

Time was running thin as it was near time to leave. The deep fog was being burnt off in pieces as sporadic light entered. Viewing the sequence on the screen of the camera, it looked promising.

It wasn’t time to go, but is it ever? 

D850 with 200-500.

My longest friend

 My longest friend

Today Roscoe and I drove over to Williston to get some seed cane from Jack Whitehurst, who came to our parsonage the day in June of 1967 when we rolled in from Kentucky, with his brother Bill and sister Harriet, to welcome us and give us some watermelons. That makes them the Williston friends I’ve known the longest. Jack, Bill and I were in the class of 1973, my sister Paula and Harriet the class of 1970. I am really stoked that he is making syrup and in the generous Whitehurst way, is offering his cane to the Trenton FFA and others to help perpetuate the art of syrup making. It was also nice to see his wife Charlene, also in our ‘73 class. 2022

A Williston girl

 A Williston girl

We moved to Williston in 1967 to the Methodist parsonage on Noble Avenue by the stately yellow brick church my father pastored for ten years. Across the street where Hardee’s is today was the two story Wilson home with a trailer park. Valerie Jones Blackburn lived in the little trailer by the road beside the service station with her tame mockingbird. She had a daughter Marguerite Davis and son Harlan. Her husband Henry died in 1958. I often visited her, for she was a painter and she would always tell me, I am praying you marry a Williston girl.

I would dismiss it for I’d run through my list of old girlfriends and most were hitched or getting hitched. We moved from Williston in 1977 to Lake City and Valerie died on April 3rd, 1978 at age 77. Her prayer I forgot. In 1986 my niece Jessica was in Shand’s hospital and her nurse was a girl from Williston my sister insisted I meet.

The day arrived and Melanie entered to check on Jessica and we met. Though I mustered courage to later ask her to go with me to fanfare and fireworks, she turned me down since she was dating a doctor. I thought, that was that.

But then, a full year later, I got this letter from Williston. It was Melanie wanting me to show her how to use her “cannon” she recently purchased. She had remembered the zoo pictures I took and taped on Jessica’s bedside wall. She had broken up with the doctor too.

I had just returned from finding a note in the bottle at St Marks wishing who found this the same happiness Bob and Carolyn White had found. The timing was beyond coincidence. 

As I drove to Williston the following Saturday, I thought of Valerie and her prayer. 

That prayer was answered January  8, 1988 at Whitehurst Memorial Chapel, just a Mockingbird call from Mrs Blackburn’s trailer.

Fly or flower?

 Fly in apothecary 

john clare 

On the day 

They will pay

Coach two million

Yearly

Covering the seven

Million buyout

On top 

Sat one wondering

How to make

Ends meet on

Poverty 

Having to get out.

How it seems

So unfitting one

Should admire

The flowers 

While all another 

Can see are so

 many

Flies

landing.

DH

 Song of a Man Who has Come Through

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,

I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,

Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?

What is the knocking at the door in the night?

It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels,

Admit them, admit them.

DH Lawrence

Emily

A dim capacity for wings

I draw much inspiration from poetry, perhaps I'm an anomaly. This from Emily Dickinson. 

From the chrysalis 

My cocoon tightens, colors tease,

I'm feeling for the air;

A dim capacity for wings

Degrades the dress I wear.

A power of butterfly must be

The aptitude to fly,

Meadows of majesty concedes 

And easy sweeps of sky.

So I must baffle at the hint

And cipher at the sign,

And make much blunder, if at last

I take the clew divine.

Zebra Longwing on Morning Glory 

God and the dock

 End of docks

john clare stokes

How do we envision

Our ending

The color fading

With persistent 

Yellow permeated 

Long since pure white

Parchment pages

Turning toward

The Revelation

That it was more

Than just a dock

More than a mere

Walk

That to Orion

It leads

And Sallie pulls

Upon the leash

Knowing finally

Tonight the stars 

We will chase.

Bill Chandler and Sallie

Watertown Dock before rails

Osprey over me

 An Osprey over me

Wildlife photography is quite easily addictive. First, you have unattainable carrots always dangling before you in the thought, you can make photographs like the guys and gals you emulate and aspire to. This in turn leads you eventually to fork out way more plastic than you can ever afford, in the hope, if only I had the same gear, I would arrive. But it seldom is so easy. There is no camera or lens out there that will put you on the level. I’ve been shooting since ‘71 and I’m still third shelf. Others I know have only been shooting less than 5 years and they are already top shelf.

It all should come down to, just enjoy the challenge of daily improving, shoot the daylights out, study, experiment, but mostly, enjoy it and don’t let it get you down you are not there yet. So what if you never get there. It beats golf.