Doctor HP Flowers

To the Lily Pond

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Cast my fate
To the lily pond
As the world floats by.

    

© d071022-008  Lily Pond
Sleepy Creek Road
Edgefield County, South Carolina
Monday 27 October 2007

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Everyday Voices

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     Cautiously I pick my way thru the wet brush anxious to avoid cat briars, stickers, ticks and who knows what else might be waiting to inflict discomfort on an uneasy trespasser.  Edging closer, watching each step, my breath quickens.  A spider web snags my cap as I peek thru the front window.  Across the living room a closet door stands open inviting my winter coat, or muddy boots or mop and broom.  From the side I see a cold brick fireplace with faded green mantle, hearth heaped with ashes from the very last fire and layered with leaves swept thru the gaping roof.  Then the voices.  I always hear the voices and sounds of home.  From the next room, or maybe from upstairs.  Everyday voices each of us would recognize, and gladly remember.

    

© d071022-016  Old House
Edgefield County, South Carolina
Monday 22 October 2007

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Thank You Prosperity

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     This year, the southeast has been desiccated by the worst drought in a hundred - an eye-opener teased from the weatherman's database with an arsenal of fancy statistics.  That aside, we've received precious little rain and have slim hope for any in the near future.  Until, that is, the day Doctor Flowers departs for his first backroads trip in several idle months.  Four soggy days later - after the rain Gods blessed the parched piney woods of South Carolina with drizzles, sprinkles, showers, fog, and miles of sticky red mud - my spirits are alive and crackling like a Van de Graaff static electric generator.  Rainy days on the road never bothered me very much.  Even with a lot of pesky condensation my restless lens was able to find:

     - still parched creeks and a misty lily pond
     - fluffy goldenrods by a ramshackle shack
     - a Quaker abolitionist cemetery from 1790
     - ivy-leaved morning glories filled with rainwater
     - Scales Grocery Store long ago decommissioned
     - golden asters and fall leaves becoming
     - two rusty old truss bridges
     - wild turkeys and buzzards on a deer carcass
     - old church on land granted directly from King George III
     - crimson hearts-a-bursting by a stained glass window
     - and especially, a town called Prosperity. 

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Prosperity, South Carolina
Newberry County
Tuesday 13 October 2007

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