1. A Natural Hammock 

The site of an everlasting treasure, ecological.

Sustained by rain from the sky and the rays of the sun, appealing to the psychological. 

Various trees descending along the Springs in a beautiful natural arrangement of leaves and branches.

Walking through on a beautiful spring day, the wind and the trees engaging in cosmically arranged dances.

A mixture of tropical and hardwood trees on a hilly barrier to the water of the Spring.

In the canopy birds rest and wait until the wind is right and they once again take wing.

Thick set trees form a natural camoflouge good enough to hide a panther.

Waiting and watching unknown, untouchable, with eyes of amber.

A timid white tail deer walks carefully on the hill above the Spring.

She has hidden her fawn, carefully in the brush and trees, she listens intently as the many birds sing.

Picture perfect setting, ecological. Picture perfect mindset the effect is psychological.

Spending the day there I imagine spreading a hammock between the trees to sway in the breeze and smell the scents of the forest, not to disturb but to reflect and meditate on the music of the branches played by the wind.

Composing lyrics and creating the rhythm on the palm of relaxing hands and then letting the sound fade as my hammock sways in time.

The sun comes down in beams through the leafy canopy just enough to be comfortable and all around the sounds continue and become one with my relaxing breath until the sun sets.

2. The Thursby House 

The house at Blue Spring Landing,

Built in 1872 atop a Native American midden,

Now stands in the shadow of an old oak that keeps it partially hidden.

Once the home of Luis Thursby,

Nearby a steamboat landing, once surrounded by an orange grove.

A stopping point for steam boats shipping goods to the north,

The grand house was heated by the fire of a wood burning stove.

The timber of its frame, constructed in 1872, were cut from three kinds of pine shipped south from Savanah.

A third story added some thirty years later, now these boards are a distinctive form of Americana.

Three white rocking chairs on the front porch.

Moving slightly from a gentle March breeze.

Maybe the once proud owners of that house are there in spirit and sitting on that porch for an afternoon of relaxation, looking over orange groves or waiting for a boat to arrive.

Only now they share their once thriving grove with visitors from all over and they stand and look through windows engaging in a voyeuristic curiosity as the boards creak underneath their feet.

3. Three Rocking Chairs 

On the porch of the Thursby House there are three rocking chairs.

Visitors sit and pass the time on lazy afternoons after stepping up the short set of stairs.

These modern visitors are inclined to browse and take photos of the surrounding place.

Maybe in the windows they can see their own reflected face.

Or maybe sitting and rocking slowly on the old porch and once relaxed they begin to contemple.

Trying to connect last and present in an effort to communicate.

Connect with some long ago scene, from an era long gone, but on some similiar, windy afternoon.

Perhaps the builder of this house sat and thought about fleeting life and freinds gone to fast?

Now we think of taking photographs, a kind of permanent autograph.

A way to pass a windy afternoon, covered porch, cooling sun kissed skin.

Or a place to wait out a rainstorm that suddenly appears on the horizon?

The welcoming chairs,

that away in the gentle breeze or that comfort in the violence of the storm.

Rocking in time to the swaying wind and the voices that carry from then to now.

4. Blue Spring Landing 

I have never been there at sunrise but I have seen the landing at sunset.

They sun’s colors out over the calm water, dark, deep full of its own secrets and ways.

This is a place to come to when the days become to much, when the mind needs to forget, or to remember the persistent passage of time and all the changes brought on by progress.

Like when steamboats once docked here and sent passengers and cargo to the dock, some for business and others just for pleasure.

Maybe from some northerrn, frozen place landing here to watch the sunset over the same water my eyes were once so fixed upon. 

A tourist from another era,

exploring this then untouched place, observing the graceful egret or a bird of prey taking off from a free by the river.

If such scenes could be set side by side and examined I imagine there would be much to be considered alike.

Me the northern transplant seeking to unwind at the number nd of a long day and some other visitor from a northern port stepping off the boat and feeling ready to unwind watching a sunset portrait presented generations apart.

We are one in this instant separated only by time. 

The landing remains constant.

5. The Great Freeze

Thursby  planted the land around Blue Springs with large orange groves.

Ben using the river he went crates full North in droves.

The location was a perfect blend of sun warmth and soil.

The oranges grew on magnificent trees and he waited till harvest came, the time of his greatest toil.

His groves produced one million boxes of fruit in a good seson. 

When the freeze came it struck down all, no rhyme, no reaeon. 

There were two periods of freeze that year.

They first in 1894 the second in 1895.

They first did not kill many mature trees and th warm month that followed set up retro th and a time to thrive.

In the second wave of ice and freeze February brought an icy wind and freezing temperatures that destroyed those once thriving trees. 

Trees and futures split in half.

Madness descended from this sky and took away the groves.
Near my house the train tracks run across the wooded edge of the Western Highlands.

I never see them but I here them rumbling along the tracks.

Whistles blowing and breaking the silence of the night; the positive silence of Blue Springs and scaring the deer that stopped to drink or the bear roaming the night.

I wonder if the old windows on Thursby’s house rattle and shake as the enormous line of cars roll by? 

It most certainly disturbed my peace for a moment but the tranquility of this Springs has been changed forever.

Probably like that night more than a century ago when all of Thursby’s trees were frozen to the core, broken in half by the weight of ice and frozen fruit. 

That wind that brought the cold soon disappeared but his fortunes changed completely.

Now the boats at landing will not pick up oranges to bring them north but they bring tourists south, they come for the c!imate, not the fruit. 

Today the boats carrying tourists are replaced by trains.

The Great Freeze changed everything then and now. 

Some change is natural, some the result of progress, some are inexplicable – supernatural leaving us breathless! 

The world turns on its axis, dependable and comstant, until the norm becomes upset and change is coded upon us – when we are pushed to new wisdom by the awful grace of God.

1. I don’t live here anymore

I never remembered these roads being so crowded and busy,

or dark as they were when I returned from a long absence and those curves and narrow turns made me dizzy.

I spent a restless night in the downstairs room by the stove, a brace against the cold wind outside.

My thoughts were thick and convoluted, unable to sleep,

the night was restless, my thoughts came and went and reminded me that I had no where to hide.

In my dreams, in and out of sleep,

came the hurtful reminder of why I left and more.

No doubt my roots here run deep,

but it is true – I don’t live here amymore.

Woke in the morning to a cold Northwest wind blowing.

I decided to walk the neighborhood streets to remember and to try to believe be again,

all around the atmosphere seemed to have stopped growing. 

I made my way home listening for all those echoes,

spoken words from yesterday, possibly still heard or maybe faded and gone forever.

Mostly what I found where ancient, shrouded, dead empty, shadows.

I don’t live here anymore.

Yesterday is now the stuff of lore.

I don’t live here anymore.

Yesterday is suspended like an unwatched movie in a now closed store.

I don’t live here anymore.

Feeling low and disconnected, I separate as with the heart of a traitor.

The morning came and the day went by as if it was a short chapter in a long book.

When night returned the book was closed and put back on a shelf.

Looking in the small mirror of the small bathroom as I shaved I told my weary self….. “I don’t live here anymore.”

2. Outside looking in

I wish I could elevate, levitate myself to the height of the big window and look in on them whenever I felt the wish to do so. 

Then I could see and sketch a personal portrait of him and her and all that passes between them.

On evenings in one of the furnished rooms, in the recliner by the China hutch or by the sofa under the eastern window there they sit and between them passes a lifetime of memory but interrupted by silence as if portions of the tape had somehow been erased. 

Maybe downstairs by the big French doors where the brown chair sits back against the glass, bathed in the soft orange light of the fire and the full blue glare of the television. 

He does not like to be interrupted but she asks if he is ok? (Sometimes provoking anger or a quick rebuke.) 

Outside the night goes on and I, just a stranger walking by, observe and wonder.

They talk about who will get what chairs and furniture, who will take the pictures off the walls and what will become of the house? 

All the while in the darker corners of the house are the lingering secrets that he has balled up and thrown away over the years that wait to be opened up and unraveled.

She keeps her secrets close to her chest as if they were pressed clothes to be out on hangers to be hung in the closet in one of the spare rooms but they are only to be worn by ohters at a much later time. 

The night continues until the sun shines into the eastern side of the house bringing light to a new day and then throwing off the chains of delusion and then grows tired having to face another day without knowing what will come later on. 

She tries to walk on egg shells to avoid his anger and I notice how she wears the expression of a lonely person.

I remain silent as my voice would not be heard anyway, I remain outside looking in, unable to intervene in the constant verbal chess he plays against the slow fade to black…..

He is restless and unable to remain still and he blames everyone but himself and his need for control, the clock ticks on the wall, the windows catch the fading sun in the hall, on the hour, the sound of chimes, reminding and marking the passage of time.

In his room he pulls the shade to block my view and then sits and stares at walls of blue.

My mind is tired, heavy and worn, those curtains are pulled down and drawn, there is nothing left to see…..

3. The Black Chair 

At my father’s house there is a black chair in an upstairs room, a reclining chair of handsome black leather with brass nails holding the upostelry in place.

From the chair he tells stories that he now struggles to remember (names, places, details) 

It is the centerpiece of the room and catches all eyes that enter especially when he sits and reads his paper, it would be a fitting memorial to sculpt him sitting in that chair but he would have to be placed in a younger, better time before his mind started to go.

Back when his wit and wisdom were sharp as a razor and he could hold his audience in the palm of his hand, instead of the cane he now carries to lean on and to carry his shifted weight up and down the stairs.

Since he is so restless and is up and down so many times a day and he always makes his way back to that black chair.

His throne, spirit having flown, mind becoming barren all the while pretending he has the qualities of a claren.

His throne in black, under the weight of his time becoming ready to crack.

Someday that black chair will be empty. 
Gracing some other room in another house the black chair of the once great cognoscente. 

4. Old Man 

You and I are one and the same.

Everything of me is of you.

Similar beyond mere name.

Old man, everything I know and practice is from the book you wrote.

All the negative and all the positive wired into me beyond simple DNA.

I wear your words like a heavy, old, winter coat.

I see and interpret your actions and now I stand by as we split into factions.

I have watched as you bully.

Never understanding your motivation fully.

I have watched as you lash out at my mild angelic mother and then belittle myself and my brothers.

Old man you have reaped and you have sown and I have watched and grown. 

Old man the sun is setting, the end is coming I am betting.

I can’t say that my gaze is never done in admiration, it is now and again.

But I can say that around the corners of my mouth and in my eyes there is resentment.

Greetings from a barren place, where nothing ever grows, and as the night builds in the old man sits staring into space.

5. Mother

My mother is the kindest woman I have ever known, angelic nature, God given, gentle spirit.

She has endured it all, even kindness and mercy unshown.

My mother sits lonely in her house.

Her children have moved away, encouraged to by their father, sometimes returning.

Homestead company except that of her deteriorating spouse.

She is smart and lonely, graceful and elegant.

She takes his moods and his bullying rants, rageful face betraying her nature by interacting roughly, he is arrogant.

The last is gone away from here and he knows best or so he says, father knows best, mother should defer, so she does and still she stays. 

One hundred days have gone.

One hundred more to come. 

One more day to many.

One more is not enough. 

Mother! 

You have not gone unnoticed.

Mother! 

You have not lost your lustre.

Figure enshrined in grave, living under strife wearing a laurel of elegance…

Figure of patience.

6. I know better

Why do you question me so boldly?

I am coherent and stable, nothing about me is feeble.

Then you sit and ask me why I stare at you so coldly?

Why did you leave me in an unfamiliar place? 

It was unnecessary to the extreme and besides I already told you, I know better!

So please take a long, deep look at the determination on my face!

I know better than all of you and I have no need for your constant streams of advice.

I know what is true, I know better than all of you.

There is no need for a dictor, my knowledge will suffice!

I don’t recall any of the things you allude to.

I don’t recall any of the things you say that I have count to.

I don’t require any evaluation.

I will use manipulation! 

I remember perfectly well everything that you can’t see.

My younger brother has come back to see me so I need to get ready for the visit.

When he comes as will visit, he and me.

I can find my way around this house, I choose to wander and he unsteady, I know better, can I have the keys to the car?

I want to go and buy you a new blouse! 

See how he wanders and stares? 

He wanders around, speaking out loud and thinks no one can hear him.

He has lost his way and still he says he knows better.

All of this is his business and he can’t imagine why anyone cares!

Pictures become turned around backwards in a broken frame.

Posted and hanging on the edge of your soul, cracked glass front.

Everything always the same.

7. Greetings from a Barren Place

How do I know?

I got left behind.

I have already day looked and he is gone. 

There is nothing left to show!

He sent his greetings from some barren place.

He asked me to look but I did not dare.

Being here was hard enough with all those feelings competing! 

Greetings from a barren place, there is nothing left of him, not a trace.

Greetings from a barren place, such a blank stare on his face.

No longer a boy, I catch my face in reflection .

No need to speak there is no one to listen.

It remains, a shiny, sinister toy.

Now the angle of light has shifted and the days are coming to an end, he stares and wonders who is looking back? The past and it’s hold on him has lifted.

The mirror does not lie!

Captured images of yesterday, up and down the stairs mirror at the top, the pictures perfect spy.
T.S. Deary