Days of Thespians past

 Days of Thespians Past

john clare stokes

Long past the forgotten lines

Well beyond the curtain call

From the bed and down the hall

To sit and mutter from Macbeth

Is this the end of Thespians

In some woodland sparse

Before the fireless hearth

From nostrils smoke leaking

Mute the cheers ringing flee

Mock the tongue tied stammer

Yet do I fear thy nature

Is this a dagger I see before me?

Nought's had, all's spent

Where our desire is got without content;

Tis safer to be that which we destroy

Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

3 men in a boat

 Courts of Coot

In the biting humidified Florida cold, behind me through the cypress came the loud thunder of the shotgun, then the flurry of birds overhead. It wasn't long before the rub a dub three boys in a boat came puttering past. I was ready and aimed to shoot them.

Well versed

 The need of being well versed in country things

Robert Frost.

The house had gone to bring again

To the midnight sky a sunset glow.

Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,

Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,

That would have joined the house in flame

Had it been the will of the wind, was left

To bear forsaken the place's name.

No more it opened with all one end

For teams that came by the stony road

To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs

And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air

At broken windows flew out and in,

Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh

From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,

And the aged elm, though touched with fire;

And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;

And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.

But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,

One had to be versed in country things

Not to believe the phoebes wept.

A mothers love

 The mothers love

Woodlands 2009

Often we think how mamma never tired

Of telling of the day I phoned her in

Crawfordville to tell her Melanie and

I were marrying. It was probably the only time the Methodist preachers wife danced. 

I truly think her love for Melanie outranks mine. I cannot tell the times she'd have the flowers ordered for me, all in my name.

If it all to an end came crashing

It would not have been in vain

For the love it gave Meme and Melanie 

Woodlands Rehabilitation

Homewood

 Homewood

john clare

Father, what shall we call

The old Towles house

Shall we name it Gavin

For the slave who built 

It of the heart pine

Shall we name it Camellia 

For the wedding gift

Bushes by the steps

Shall we name it Lucille

For the blind matron

Whose cane etched her

Path down the dog  trot

Shall we name it Ethel Marie

For a mother who died

Too soon in August

We shall name it for all

These things

We shall call it 

Homewood.

To an atlete

Honeymoon Marathon

Melanie offering a cup of water on the January 9,1988 Jacksonville Marathon. We were married in Williston the previous evening.

To an athlete dying young

 

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsmen of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renoun outran

And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl's.

A.E.Housman

C.March 1895,1896

Kid gloves

 What came of the kid gloves

treating one another 

with care

Much love to spare

Never a shove

Oh the bare knuckle

Blows upon jaws

As kid gloves fall

Love crumples.

Last evening

 Last evening...the blowing wind...decided who would live...and who would die...Last evening...I determined....who would live...and who would die... placing blankets over some....leaving others to succumb...Last evening...the blowing wind...blew the blankets....blew them over the plants...I sentenced to die....killing the plants....l deemed to live...Last evening.

Good times

 Early days of 87 when Mel and I were dating. The only time she met Uncle Curtis and Aunt Grace from Syrma,Ga at Crawfordville. We later named Jordon for Curtis. With sister Paula, dog Beasley, Allison and Jessica, Luther and Clara.

For Melanie

 For Melanie

In the beginning of our journey

We went flower picking in Micanopy

Later, from Lucille Towles camellia 

Her wedding gift many years earlier

I presented Melanie many

So every time I see a Camellia

I think of Melanie

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Camellia

For promotion

 For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: He putteth down one, and setteth up another. Psalms 75:6-7.

Two live

 Two live

The Ninety and nine said

Come and die

What use has the tree and sky

 for you?

Did you not hear?

The two replied,

Fall has died.

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Metaphor