Aligned

 The planets

Aligned

Just in time

For the end

Of time

Glad I was 

Here before

The spinning

Out of alignment

Then the

Hurling us

Toward to North

Pole only now

Antarctica

Giving us relief

In this heat

Kingdoms come

Just when we

Need it.

Message in a sonnet

 Message in a sonnet

johnClare stokes

For years I HID the way I was feeling,

The heart WITHIN at your sight in turmoil,

In THE unguarded moments a glance taking,

The SONNET then never a thing of toil.

It was in THIS thought today I dwelt,

The MESSAGE years ago I should have sent,

OF how it was I truly felt,

ALL these long years in silence spent.

With THESE words time and again unsaid,

Of SEEING ones content in the telling,

I visit the graves of these long dead,

How they LOVED in open together dwelling.

And I never raised to YOU the toast,

To tell all that I loved you MOST.

Man foot

 Man foot

I stood at the edge of the puddle

Pondering the path of the herons feet

Circling about the reflected sun

And I wondered

Why man would step in it

And intrude.

Landon

 O Lemuel 

I can vividly see the day in the grape arbor chapel daddy constructed in his backyard, where mornings he’d sit and meditate, often upon a sermon he was to deliver that Sunday.  I do not know what he told Landon that morning, I was out of earshot and did not want to intrude upon the conversation.

It’s now going on ten years since daddy went to Orange Hill, ten years since hearing any word from Landon. Father’s Day is one of those days of hope, that we will get the call, the card, the message upon the messenger, but we kind of know, like daddy resting with mamma at the cemetery, some things await the resurrection day.

Lament

 Fathers Day

It’s not the fathers we think of

upon this day

but the mothers who took time

to bake those oatmeal cookies

who made the fathers feel part

for few the sons

who compose the card

who pick out the tie

No, it’s their mothers who say

Sign this card to your daddy

Call your father 

I don’t care

you haven’t spoken in years

Tomorrow I will not expect

the card 

the cookies

the call

for you see

My mother isn’t here to remind

Anybody.

Ocean Pond

 The point of get no better

How many it don’t get any better

moments do we have in this life?

There we were at the turn of midnight

the lightening storm in the distance

over the calm star shining Ocean pond

You couldn’t hear the constant commotion

as our twenty five second exposures 

tried to capture it

Ed

 Jordon and I made a new friend in 2020, Ed Holland from North Carolina, super nice and talented, down at Hamburg Lake, as we all three pointed our cameras at the Red Shouldered hawk taking the fish the fisherman tossed to him.

D7500 200-500

Sony A73r  200-600

D800    28-300

The old paths

 The old paths

Few of us recall the old paths

Once so well marked and open

When came the lean years

The neglected days

When we no longer knew the way

New paths were blazed

Straight and to the point

Uninspired and sterile safe

And so we trudged and tramped

Where once we meandered 

Merrily

Then came one who knew

The old crooked route

Who mended the fallen gate

Opened just enough the path

And though few still choose

This longer winding way

It is there

And not lost to the one

In need of some wandering along.

Troubling the waters

 Troubling the waters

You see, we do not go down to the waters

in expectation of catching

Of taking from the deep

We go down in the expectation of

being there perchance the stirring

begins as the angel descends 

and alone, we find the long sought

healing

It keeps us coming

Spirit of 76

 Spirit of 76 in 1976

I cannot recall who I handed the camera to on the Williston Methodist Church steps. We were celebrating the bicentennial of USA and centennial of First Methodist with Lewis proudly wearing his minuteman outfit mamma sewed.

We would stay in Williston until 1979 after ten years.

Walls talk

 Walls talk

john clare stokes 

They often ask in cliche tones if only walls could talk

And I tell them again, they do, you just weren’t taught their language

The manner in which they speak,

Continually telling those who know, with every creak in every shadow; telling you, 

Take the time, stand ever so still, perhaps you’ll discern;

Listen, from the cool sand below the porch, the sound of playing, the lift of laughter:

The peeling paint above revealing the layers of many cheerful coming over greetings,

The haint blue porch ceiling, the spooks confusing,

not wanting to be sent into the water,

off the silver now brown tin the rain pattering in unison

to the old dog fennel hounds howling to the familiar tune.

In the crisp fall the old screen door spring snapping open and shut, 

The voice to the ones in the field loudly calling them in

Some summer sultry days the conversations swell louder than the myriad cicadas dictating the words,

Rising to abruptly fall in silence as the invisible 

conductor lowers the limb wand. 

In winter you can hear the burring words in the chattering chill

Swear from the cracked chimney a fire was yet glowing 

Sending sweet aromas of curing one could cut and taste,

the front room always kept warm for the ones

outside wandering afar

Wondering if the inner wars they were battling would

ever come to terms of peace

The smooth glass door knob turning in the evening gloam

Those huddled about the hearth determined they heard the words of one long ago journeying 

But it wasn’t the traveller returning after all

It was but the talking walls 

Yes, the echoes off the walls telling it all.

Gum Swamp Rd

Burned down

Poetry in the family

 My father

He was sort of poet

But mother

She was

Well she once

Wrote 

Poetry 

Before I

Came along

That was all that was

Necessary 

To make a poet

A preacher and

A Home Ec teacher

And thus

My son is a poet

And his son will be one too

And thus begins

A long lineage 

Of poets.