4th heaven

4th heaven

Lately the angels were lagging

In their guardian duties

And this displeased the Lord truly

To the 4th heaven His laggards sending

For today a new teacher has arrived

Experienced already in angelic duties

And to boot she’s quite the beauty

As the remedial angels sighed

Now class stand and pledge allegiance 

Hand over heart and wings straight

And thus began the whipping in shape

The new teacher and her host of students

Soon it came time for mid eternity exams

These once lagging guardians beamed

As all passed with hundreds times hundreds

Not a finer angelic teacher was ever found

But the angels were saddened somewhat 

Though now promoted to the fifth heaven

Word was it wasn’t such the blessing

As with this new teacher of 4th heaven Summers.

My mother, Clara Jean Orander Stokes would have been 98 today. She taught 4th grade mostly. 

Here shown in Wilmore Elementary, Kentucky.

Others love

 Others love

Today was one particularly bad pity party, thinking how day upon day, I go to work, and it’s as if you’re not even liked, not even important, no one ever asks, and how are you? Your family? And it rubs upon you, today perhaps more acutely, for all day I thought upon my mother and how totally not she was this way, always thinking of others, their concerns, their hopes, joys, setting hers aside, not even expecting any praise or kind word her way. And so I too tried to lay aside my self absorption and expectation from those incapable, focused in their own worlds, and tried in just a small way, to be like my mother and love others, and not expect any love my way.

Waler house

 The Waler house

Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

I’m sure there is history to the Waler house, beside the men’s bathhouse. Were I a Shaker

and I had to abide by their strict religious ways,

I imagine I’d spend most of my days in the Waler house.

The trumpets sound

 The Trumpets Sound

Today has been overcast and raining. It was kind of like in the Crumpler Mountains of West Virginia, I knew as a boy, the coal dust from the Pocahontas mine giving the fall landscape a coating of fine black, dulling the brilliance. When my Crumpler born mother passed away on this day three years ago, a day short of her 89th birthday, we sang at her funeral in the Williston United Methodist Church, who celebrated 150 years today, “When the roll, is called up yonder”.

Being a teacher her entire career, it was appropriate. It was the only time I visibly cried when we sang it. We never know why and what triggers our crying. We mostly hide it. 

The first line goes, “when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more.”

Wes Smith, the pastor of the Williston Church of God we are now attending, gave the sermon today from first Peter titled, The end is near. I am biased, for Wes, a year younger than me, was my friend and fellow Methodist at my fathers church when we came to Williston in 1967. I think Wes is one of the finest Pastors I’ve ever heard. But I’m biased. His mother is definitely the best piano player. As we left, the crow atop the steeple seemed to be sounding the same theme. I’ve always been one to take great stock in the animal kingdom, kept mute yet seeing clearly, unlike us, the invisible One, I would like to think. Like Baalam’s donkey. 

At the Ivy House for lunch, we remarked as to the lovely pink flowers in the yard beside the City Hall. I took a photo and google said it was the pink trumpet vine. Walking out in the Williston rain, I could hear a distant song, 

I could hear the Wesley Smith family singing even more clearly than in 1975, The Sounds of His Coming.

Can you hear it? Please attune so you can.

From oval frames

 From oval frames

Johnclarestokes 

Freed at last from the oval frame

From Crumpler the studious girl came

Sitting in the parlor quietly she read

Then far into the night upon her bed

Coal fields outside frozen in purest snow

To thaw into springs of darkest flow

Lost in a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs

My every thought upon the girl so wonderful 

In the leaves falling from the holler hills

In the summers first cooling chill

The studious girl forever reading quietly

To my children’s children far into the night gently.

Meme’s Roll call up yonder nine years ago today at 1:11.

Onto October 4th

 Plead the 4th

Today marks two events in our lives, the passing of Meme Clara nine years ago one day before her 89th birthday and this day in 2009 when Melanie went to Lake Shore for an x ray and wound up that night in Orlando ICU with H1n1.

Valedictory

 The valedictorian of Northfolk High

Today she turns ninety- six

She gets her hair done on Fridays

and flags the bus passing by

To Crumpler over narrow roads

the kind driver smiling as they go

miners blackened save the eyes

The only way we recognize 

Which is Alfred and which is not

Each time they make a stop

Another parts to yellow homes

Soon all the miners are gone

The kindly driver parks at the stucco

two story and in the back they go 

Miss Daisy the black cat greets daddy and

The valedictorian with the pretty bangs

Fridays I seem to think upon these themes.

High Climb

High climb

Johnclarestokes 

But for a time

The path is strewn

With darkness and mist

But beyond the ridge

There lies the love

Upon the crest 

Never more to miss.

O’er East River

O’er the East River Mountain 

To the land beyond ole Cumberland 

The Pocahontas whistle sounds 

Come, come, to the eternal grounds. 

To the peak of East River Mountain

 Far Below Bluefield

The home place of my mother

The birth place of her son. 

Theron coming

 Theron Coming

John Clare Stokes

Give ear you sojourners to the calling clarion bells,

Calling way down to where the artisans dwell.

Theron coming. Theron coming.

Gather your paints you plein air travelers,

Fill your flasks from the sulphurous waters pure.

Theron calling. Theron calling.

Rise from obscurity in your humble boarding rooms,

Come compose upon the canvas under a crescent moon.

Theron coming, Theron coming.

From Roline, Turner, Prospect, Cone the call,

Big Shoals, Blue Sink, Rocky Creek to Roaring Falls.

Theron calling, Theron calling.

 Guide us Timucuan dugouts to this peaceful ground,

Through the Big Shoals safely lead us around.

Theron coming, Theron coming.

Down from Okeefenokee Gauldings artisans come,

To gather under the towering clarion.

Theron coming, Theron calling.

Whew

Whew wee

By the time Lewis came along, all the suffering was over. I’d already recovered from a kick in the groin by Paula causing a hernia that needed surgery, I had already had to play baby with her and Joan Sanders, already been chased out of the house with butcher knives by Angeline Donaldson, the beloved maid, almost drowned in the Sopchoppy by Janet Trice, pushing me into the deep, endured quarantine of measles, mumps and scarlet fever in the same room, got whippings not my fault, so don’t let the sweet smile fool you.

Light sounds

 Way down upon a lighter scale

I am quick to point out others interpretations

As if I have some grand ability for correction

If you play the bassoon in deep, dark notes

Who am I in The piccolo section to question?

Lean years

 The lean years

...the years swung on, some things it seemed would always remain the same, so slow was the lean we never took notice and no one ever told us we walked with a rightward bend.