DR. EMORY D. JONES - POEMS

Dr. Emory D. Jones is a retired English teacher who has taught in Cherokee Vocational High School in Cherokee, Alabama, for one year, Northeast Alabama State Junior College for four years, Snead State Junior College in Alabama for three years, and Northeast Mississippi Community College for thirty-five years. He joined the Mississippi Poetry Society, Inc. in 1981 and has served as President of this society. He has over two hundred and thirty-five publishing credits including publication in such journals as Voices International, The White Rock Review, Free Xpressions Magazine, The Storyteller, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Gravel, Pasques Petals, The Pink Chameleon, and Encore: Journal of the NFSPS.  He is retired and lives in Iuka, Mississippi, with his wife, Glenda.  He has two daughters and four grandchildren.

---

 
                   THE SPIRIT MOVES YOU: A SESTINA

​
You are so pale you must have seen a ghost
No wonder in this old abandoned house
When outside there’s a spreading chestnut tree
Whose rippled reflection shimmers in the pond--
Beyond the pond there is a mounded grave
And all above a beautiful sky-blue heaven.
But now the wind arouses stormy heaven
And awakens from its sleep the shrouded ghost
Where stone cannot now mark a shallow grave
That once belonged to a person in this house;
No life can stir within this muddy pond
Clogged with leaves that fall from this old tree.
Gripping this earth, this ancient sentinel tree
Stretches its limbs and reaches to the heaven
That spreads above and smiles in that old pond
That ripples as if it were touched by playful ghost
Who glides upon the porch of this old house
And dances as if it never knew the grave.
But now it is more serious and grave
As sky now darkens above the ancient tree
And windows glare like eyes in this old house
With not a beam of light from darkened heaven--
Wind devils play in the yard as if the ghost
Is stirring them.  And swirling roiling pond
Flings its spray in air above the pond
More fitting for the spirit than the grave
From which escaped the mischievous rollicking ghost;
The air is warm and damp upon the tree
And sun smiles from a sky of golden heaven
And life now seems to return to this old house.
And now you can return to this old house
A place of quiet rest beside the pond
Most familiar under smiling heaven
As flowers decorate the peaceful grave
That rests beneath the greening chestnut tree
And now provides a rest for peaceful ghost.
 
You cherish memories in this old house
And quiet days of fishing in the pond
Under the shadow of the chestnut tree.
 

 
                                              GOOD GOD
                                                           (a Double Gloss)
 
(Based upon the following lines from
“Yet Do I Marvel” by Countee Cuillen
 I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die….)
 
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And , led by His Holy Spirit, we will find
Blessed happiness, a core of peace,
And in the middle of our strife release
From struggle and a joyful, peaceful mind--
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind.
 
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The worm must come before the butterfly
Or human hearts, when softening, must break
And flood the eyes.  But then how could he take
Notice of all the little hurts we cry
Unless He stoops to quibble and tell why?
 
The little buried mole continues blind
With little cares of what he leaves behind
Because within his world there are none who see
Or strive to rise out of the earth.  But we
Still question Nature that would forever bind
The little buried mole to continue blind.
 
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Invade the realm of mole, in earth to lie
While all above us continues as before,
Not knowing, until then, that death’s a door?
But then we understand God’s reason why,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die.
 

 
 
 
CHRISTINA’S WORLD
(An Ekphrastic Poem)
 
In the painting
‘Christina’s World”
Andrew Wyeth
Depicts
A black-haired woman,
In skirt and blouse,
Raising herself
Off the ground and
Gazing up a hill
At a gray
Unpainted house,
Barn,
And outbuildings.
 
Is she longing
For a past love?
Is she seeking
A lost
Childhood?
 
An air of mystery
Lingers
In this
Composition
That will always
Make us wonder.