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Posts Tagged ‘Southern writing’

Wanting to Be a Forest

Posted in family, Imagery, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2024| 6 Comments »

 . 
[with 3 poems by Frank X Walker]
 . 
Grove
 . 
This was the first time
we really look at each other
and not be able to tell
who master the cruelest
who sorrow the deepest
who ground been the hardest to hoe.
 . 
We was lined up like oaks in the yard
standing with our chins up,
proud chests out, shoulders back,
and already nervous stomachs in.
 . 
We was a grove wanting to be a forest,
ready to see what kind of wood we made from.
 . 
The only thing taller or straighter
than us be the boards
holding up the barracks at our backs,
 . 
though most our feets feel pigeon-toed
and powerful sore
from marching back and forth, every day,
for what seem like more miles
than we walked to get here.
 . 
It take more than pride to stand still
‘neath these lil’ hats not made for shade.
 . 
Soldiering ain’t easy, but it sure beats
the bloody leaves off a bondage.
 . 
Frank X Walker
from Load in Nine Times, Liveright Publishing Corporation (W. W.Norton), New York, NY; © 2024
[based on a photo taken at Camp Nelson, Kentucky, of troops standing at attention outside the Colored Soldiers Barrack]
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
1861      One month after Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Kentucky’s Governor issues a formal proclamation of neutrality, but he retreats from any denunciation of slavery, which he believes is not a “moral, social, or political evil.” Four months later Kentucky decides to end neutrality and enters the Civil War on the side of the Union; 200 delegates vote to secede from the rest of the state and form a separate Confederate Kentucky with Bowling Green as capital.
 . 
1862      Abraham Lincoln’s EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION declares freedom for all enslaved persons in states which are in rebellion against the United States. This leaves slaves in Union-aligned Kentucky still the property of their masters, however.
 . 
1864      The U.S. government’s progress towards making universal emancipation a war aim has caused support for the war and the government among White Kentuckians to dwindle. Military recruitment ebbs. On June 13, U.S. SPECIAL ORDER NO. 20 allows enslaved persons to enlist in the U.S. Army without their owner’s consent and be granted their freedom, the first pathway to legal emancipation in Kentucky. That summer and fall, 14,000 Black men enlist.
 . 
Only Black men who are fit for military duty are emancipated, however. If they are ineligible, they are returned to enslavement, and there is no offer of freedom for their families. Camp Nelson, Kentucky’s largest recruitment and training base, becomes a haven for refugees from slavery, whether escaping from Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina or arriving with their newly enlisted Kentucky husbands or fathers. Freedom seekers from the South are considered “contraband of war” and granted freedom, but slaves of White Kentuckians remain legal property of their masters with no formal protections.
 . 
On November 22, 1864, in the midst of a winter storm, Brigadier General Speed S. Frye orders all refugees surrounding Camp Nelson expelled and their shacks destroyed. Of 400 people immediately displaced without shelter or recourse, at least 102 die of exposure and starvation. Frye’s order is quickly rescinded by his superiors in Kentucky but headlines cause an outcry across the States. On December 15, Adjutant General L. Thomas issues ORDERS NO. 29 to require that “all camps enlisting Negroes provide suitable housing and provisions for their families.”
 . 
Within months, the War Department creates the Home for Refugees at Camp Nelson. On March 3, 1865, the US Congress passes laws to emancipate the wives and children of United States Colored Troops soldiers.
 . 
Camp Nelson, Kentucky, is now a National Monument, and includes a memorial obelisk to honor the 102 African Americans who perished in The Expulsion.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
We Will Prove Ourselves Men
++ Sewn on the regimental flag
++ of the 127th U.S. Colored Troops
 . 
I don’t look the stars and stripes
nor the eagle for mustard
 . 
like the white officers
and some of my free brothers do.
 . 
I think on the slender fingers
that stitched our proud colors
 . 
snapping in the wind,
the same steady hands
 . 
that last held me close,
and pray they hold me again.
 . 
That’s why I’m willing
to trade bullets in a cloud.
 . 
Some confuse our bravery and courage
with our love for our women,
 . 
but many of us just eyeing that flag
and trying our best to get back home.
 . 
Frank X Walker
from Load in Nine Times, Liveright Publishing Corporation (W. W.Norton), New York, NY; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
My Grandpop died when he was 67 and I was 5. Our families lived hundreds of miles apart – we in New York, then Tennessee, he and Nana in North Carolina – so we visited only two or three times a year. I can’t recall the sound of his voice, I’m not sure if he ever hugged me, but I know a story about him and me that I have retold myself so many times that it is tangibly real. Totally, unquestioningly, personally real:
 . 
We are in the dining room of his house that overlooks Bogue Sound. He, a surgeon, is holding my fingers in his. In the pressure of his fingers I am aware of the bones beneath my skin, and he is teaching me: Carpals, Metacarpals, Phalanges.
 . 
I have many photos of Grandpop, his enigmatic smile. I have copies of articles he published, things he crafted with his hands, an oil painting. I have photos he took of me, even an old 35 mm. silent movie. But the most real, the most present, is this story I keep and hold. Perhaps the artifacts helped me create the story. Perhaps hearing the story as it was told to me by Nana and Mom. However the story comes into being, into life, it brings reality with it.
 . 
So it is with Frank X Walker and his poems in Load in Nine Times. Frank was already deeply involved in resurrecting and creating the stories of Black Civil War soldiers in Kentucky and their families, using scant artifacts to create short biographies and allow these men and women to live (for a project at Reckoning.com). Then he thought to ask the archivist to research a possible relative of his own. And the sky opened.
 . 
Frank’s dedication for the collection of some 100 poems reads thus: For my ancestors, Mary and Randal Edelen, 125th U.S. Colored Infantry and Elvira and Henry Clay Walker, 12th U.S. Colored Troops Heavy Artillery. These folks speak and are joined by dozens of others who lived and suffered and sometimes triumphed. Through poetry they have all come to life, along with the middle decades of 19th century Kentucky. Slave and slave owner, soldier and widow, parent of despair and parent of hope – Frank has honored them and exposed them, judged them and sometimes forgiven them, given them sharp tongues and sharp features and brought their years into sharp, sharp focus.
 . 
And our years as well. What did I know about Civil War Kentucky, USA? As soon as I laid down the book I had to know more. More! Frank educates with timelines and resources but his greatest gift is to enlighten me, in the sense of casting light into dark corners where I had never thought to look. When I discover online some of the photographs he must have used for his own inspiration, those slightly blurred faces now suddenly stand out to me – real men, real women. We each owe it to ourselves to continue to tell our stories and to listen to new ones. Somehow, in this harsh and enervating world, perhaps this is the way we will become more real to each other.
 . 
❦
 . 
Read the excellent interview with Frank X Walker by Jacqueline Allen Trimble as she explores with him the creation of Load in Nine Times, in the Oct 19, 2024 edition of Salvation South.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
A Black Father Dreams a Son
++ Brig. Gen. Charles Young,
++ 9th U.S. Cavalry Regiment
 . 
It was twelve miles to Maysville and the Ohio River and another
ten to Ripley. A runaway could escape from Mays Lick,
at night, head north, follow the smell of the river and make
the entire distance and crossing by sunrise. A determine one,
on horseback, like Gabriel Young, could make it in half the time.
 . 
Ignoring racism at West Point was easier knowing
my father survived slavery. He joined the 5th and risked his life
so our people would know freedom. I risk mine to protect it.
 . 
If his sacrifice and commitment freed my body, my mother’s books
free my mind. Her skirt was my first classroom.
Every big and small thing I’ve done began at their feet.
 . 
Though born into slavery in Kentucky, I learned to play piano
and violin, speak French and german, before becoming a teacher,
before graduating from West Point, before a career in the military,
and public service.
 . 
Growing up in Ripley showed me what this country could be.
What my parents instilled in me, and Wilberforce proved it.
 . 
I am America’s promise, my mother’s song,
and the reason my father had every right to dream.
 . 
Frank X Walker
from Load in Nine Times, Liveright Publishing Corporation (W. W.Norton), New York, NY; © 2024
[Charles young, born in 1864 into slavery to Gabriel Young and Armenta Bruen in Mays Lick, Kentucy, was the first Black man to achieve the rank of colonel in the Unites States Army, and the highest ranking Black officer in the regular army until his death in 1922. In 2022, in recognition of his exemplary service and barriers he faced due to racism, he was posthumously promoted to brigadier general.]
[these addenda are taken from the Author’s notes]
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Panta rhei

Posted in poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 1, 2024| 7 Comments »

 . 
[with 3 poems by Melinda Thomsen]
 . 
11. Colorado Springs
 . 
In a breath, the sun emerges unfurled
behind the hangar, and the sky turns gold.
It burns like an ore, as nearby grasses roll
in a breeze, and rows of sunflowers twirl
 . 
and flex. The Queen Anne’s lace slowly maps
the sun’s route west. A magpie somewhere
near the playing field squawks. Dawn appears
in shades of granite wearing a mica cap.
 . 
Let me put on the sky’s sapphire chains
and earth’s necklace of headlights from the cars
winding to Denver in their jeweled train.
 . 
When headlamps dim, sunshine shoots like stars
off the cargo bays of arriving planes,
and daybreak shows its wealth by reaching far.
 . 
Melinda Thomsen
from Dropping Sunrises in a Jar, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY; © 2024
[this poem is one segment of the poet’s sonnet redoublé]
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The sentinel sugar maple stationed above us on the roadway is first. Each day we park at the track and look up to its expansive globe outstretched in meditation. Preceding all other trees, it affirms change. In the swelling conflict of its upper limbus butterscotch and sulfur, sweet and harsh become the beginning of leaving behind the green of summer. Green we might have convinced ourselves to be eternal and foundational. But all things flow. You can never stand twice beneath the same tree.
 . 
❦
 . 
Last night a brief gusty squall; this morning the lone sugar maple has relinquished all but a few scattered flags and tatters. As we enter the woods, however, all the other trees in this progressive congregation are industrious in their competition. Who can display the brightest color? Who the most varied, the most novel? The southern slant of sun penetrates as if through stained glass; streaming light proclaims its gospel of chlorophyll, abscission, anthocyanins, carotenoids. Linda and I drop our worries along the trail like a trail of breadcrumbs – we can at least hope that the birds and chipmunks will devour them all in the hour before we return this way.
 . 
And now we’ve reached the last straight segment before the walking trail offers to climb the ridge and lead back down to the river. We can see the turning where it beckons. Before we reach it we will cross the high bridge over Crooked Creek and look down to see if our fat water snake is sunning herself among the south-facing rocks as usual. Just beyond the bridge we will enter the final high vaulted cathedral. Overleaning trunks and branches, pointed arches familiar in the minds of trees long before Sumeria or Samarra, clad with brass and jade, they invite us now to share this space in reverence.
 . 
❦
 . 
This cathedral of flux. The never-changing God this world worships is the God of Changes. The crimson Michaux lilies that celebrated here in August today merely nod a few dry, creased, tri-partite pods, but what do they hold? A celebration of seeds. And beneath the springy duff the roots gone dormant have not forgotten their desire to rise again next April.
 . 
Linda and I stand here for a moment, in the moment. The memory of red blossoms is not what we worship. The anticipation of future blooming is not what we worship. Right here right now is the only real thing – the only real thing is all things that have come before and all that may yet become. We hold a single thought, we hold all thought. For one brief moment approaching joy we are engulfed, we merge with the flux.
 . 
Panta rhei. All things flow.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Dropping Sunrises in a Jar
 . 
When daybreak edged the earth,
++++ I would roll over – unlike the birds.
It was as if we lived in separate jars.
++++ Wrens whistle and chirp about flames
blooming into a ball at sunrise
++++ then hush with the sun’s full burning.
 . 
I used to sleep through the daily burning
++++ for I didn’t care much how the earth
rotated itself into another sunrise.
++++ But years later, I wondered why birds
got so excited about a horizon in flames.
++++ So much time, I’ve spent within a jar.
 . 
The birds, too, live in a sort of jar,
++++ but they focus outward and seem to burn
with a gratitude that fans their inner flame.
++++ See pelicans fly about the earth?
They dip and lift until the idea of bird
++++ becomes a winged embrace at sunrise.
 . 
When I traveled, I watched every sunrise
++++ to see night leave its door to morning ajar,
and in its wake, I heard the calls from birds.
++++ Each place began with its horizon burning,
though, and I worry our Goldilocks earth
++++ is ending. We choose to go in flames,
 . 
or up in smoke like a moth drawn to flame
++++ when just right gets too hot, but each sunrise
still unleashes warbling tenors upon the earth.
++++ For we don’t see birds flying into bell jars
or coal mines, do we? While forests burn
++++ in the west, in the east, squirrels and birds
 . 
gear up for hurricanes. Notice how birds
++++ of a feather fly from floods and flames?
Instead, I wake to the sky’s daily burning
++++ in these – my sunset – years to collect sunrises.
One by one, I drop then in a jar
++++ like candies gathered from my forgiving earth.
 . 
But this burning keeps flushing out the birds,
++++ who welcome the earth as if an old flame
and add their sunrise songs to its tip jar.
 . 
Melinda Thomsen
from Dropping Sunrises in a Jar, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY; © 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Melinda Thomsen lets no sunrise escape her. While the eye notices light returning to the world and the ear may welcome the first emphatic burst of wrensong, the soul delves deeper to discover that the light has never left. Some place where I can untangle myself through flashes of beauty – this is Melinda’s journey and her destination. And as we travel with her across the world and through the universe of Dropping Sunrises in a Jar, this might be the promise we hope to fulfill – One day you’ll shape yourself into the bird your soul holds.
 . 
❦
 . 
These poems are woven with recurring images of sunrise and sky, birdsong and sunflowers, but in addition to these enticements Melinda’s use of formality has ensnared me. I am a sucker for a good sestina; this collection’s title poem is a great one. I had pretty much assumed it’s impossible to actually write a Heroic Crown of Sonnets (sonnet redoublé) but here Melinda has mastered it. In just 31 pages, this sequence elevates us and carries us into new worlds.
 . 
Purchase Dropping Sunrises in a Jar at Finishing Line Press.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The Zoetrope Sunrise of the Taihang Mountains
 . 
Waking in a sleeper car, bunked
with three strangers, I raise the shade
 . 
to watch the sunrise, a pale peach glow,
among the snoring. Cornfields stretch
 . 
beneath gauzy clouds as our train enters
a tunnel and metal sounds reflect
 . 
off its stone interior. As we exit,
the ochre sky lightens, then another
 . 
tunnel and again a waterfall of noise.
Now, the sun glows behind mountain
 . 
peaks, and mist rests in the Taihang
valley of lush shrubbery when a tunnel
 . 
eclipses that view. The train
travels through tunnel after tunnel,
 . 
but between glimpses, the sun rises
and we emerge into a village
 . 
with streams edging the foothills
framed with cornfields and box houses.
 . 
A man feeds his donkey.
The child in our cabin coughs.
 . 
For the Chinese, the road over
Taihang means the frustrations of life.
 . 
Where the sun rises through slits,
this zoetrope carries me home,
 . 
or some place where I can untangle
myself through flashes of beauty.
 . 
I had to get out through stillness;
until bit by bit, the womb opened.
 . 
Melinda Thomsen
from Dropping Sunrises in a Jar, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY; © 2024
 . 
[zoetrope: An optical toy, in which figures made to revolve on the inside of a cylinder, and viewed through slits in its circumference, appear like a single figure passing through a series of natural motions as if animated or mechanically moved. – – – bg]
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Three aphorisms attributed to Heraclitus (Greek, ca. 500 BC) declare change and conflict as the fundamental characteristics of reality:
On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow.
We both step and do not step into the same river, we both are and are not.
It is not possible to step into the same river twice.
The central tenets of Heraclitus’s philosophy are the unity of opposites and the centrality of flux (change) as encapsulated in the phrase Panta rhei, all things flow.
 . 
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Moving Day

Posted in family, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 18, 2024| 6 Comments »

 . 
[with 4 poems from I-70 Review]
 . 
Bears Active in This Area
 . 
++++ warning sign in my mountain cabin
 . 
This time, others have seen you,
treading circles on the gravel drive,
shouldering through grapevine tangles.
The possibility of you was always here,
in the night-mouth of the cave that gapes
below my porch, in dark boulders
hulking along the trail.
 . 
Your presence countermands silence –
I chatter and sing as I walk the open road,
snatches of carols, toddler songs –
and shy from the path that meanders
to a sunlit filed strewn with windfalls
from long-neglected trees. I imagine
you keeping pace, just out of sight,
your huffs mocking my jabber,
your heavy steps a counterpoint
as I scurry past thickets, scan uneasily
the curving trail ahead, intruder
in a world that was never mine,
though you are the first to insist
that I acknowledge it.
 . 
Rebecca Baggett
from I-70 Review, Eighteenth Edition, 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
What would a toddler remember about moving away? The apartment in Niagara Falls is a dream of stairwells and windows and darkness outside; the new house in the new subdivision with no grass at all is a neighbor’s dog named Bishy. Or was Bishy the neighbor’s toddler I played with?
 . 
I am four when we move away again, from New York to Tennessee, and I remember plenty about Marion Road: Bob and I watching Little Rascals until Mom declares, “You’re going to turn into rascals!”; our little sun room Aunt Ellen fitted up as a bed-sit while she attended Memphis State, and we kids hiding giggling under her covers until she came home each afternoon; the neighbor boy who introduced us to the word butt and we thought we were the first humans ever to utter something so outrageous. Memories of the neighborhood, yes, but memories of moving there? Packing and unpacking? Worrying that Puppy would get lost in the shuffle or that somehow Mom wouldn’t be there when we arrived? None of that remains.
 . 
Our family makes one more inconsequential move just blocks away when I am six, but then when I’m twelve the Big Away arrives. Up until this what a tranquil 1950’s childhood: I walk to Colonial Elementary every morning with my friends and play with the same friends every evening until the streetlights come on. Serene. Now I’m midway through sixth grade, still coasting, when the bomb drops. Did I protest when Dad announced in January we were leaving Memphis to move to Delaware? Maybe, I don’t recall; that memory is muddy, but this one is sharp as crystal – I walk into class in my new school and my new classmates all turn to look. My clothes aren’t right, my accent is a joke (literally – within about sixty seconds I will have the nickname “Memphis,” which sticks), and I have a different teacher for every subject. And then in just six more months we will move to Michigan. Just over a year beyond that, two months into eighth grade, we move to Ohio.
 . 
So, my friend, is it any wonder that some sixty years later I have trouble remembering your name until the fourth or fifth time we meet? That as we converse in a group you notice me smiling and nodding and slowly drifting off into space? That I would rather write this blog into the wee hours than drop by your house for coffee? I want to be a good friend to you, and in fact I like you and this hug from me to you is real, but ah, it’s risky. There’s always that possibility, without warning and with no desire on my part, that someday soon I might be moving away.
 . 
❦
 . 
It never occurred to me to wonder how Dad felt about all those moves. The moving was his fault, after all, necessary for his promotions and advancement with DuPont, for whom he worked all his life. I can scarcely imagine the million details he had to sift through to put his family into boxes and take them out again hundreds of miles away. I’m not surprised that as I clean out his house I find drawers full of lists on yellow pads, on the backs of junk mail, on bills and receipts. Half the time when he calls me, it’s to add something to the shopping list. And then there are still those boxes in the attic labeled Allied Van Lines.
 . 
But what about the rest of us? Did Dad wake sweating in the middle of the night worrying how moving away would affect his family? Just one time he blinked: after I was married and gone but Mary Ellen was still at home, a junior in high school, Dad turned down a promotion so she could graduate with her class. A sacrifice that stalled his career for a decade.
 . 
Tomorrow is Dad’s last moving day. Since Mom died in July, Dad has agreed to move closer to us. For a week I’ve ferried boxes and duffels, checked off my lists and then made new ones, and tomorrow after lunch I’ll drive Dad to a nursing center just two miles from our house. He says he’s willing to move as long as the food is good (it is). We’ve hung portraits of the grandkids, pastels by Mom. His Duke pillow is on the recliner and his new Duke banner hangs on the door of room 507 to welcome him. God knows I’ve been waking in the middle of the night sweating the million details. Let us hope that after 98 years of moving, Dad will discover in this new and final home a place to rest.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Porta Nigra   *
 . 
++++ Trier, Germany
 . 
The breath of sun and rain
only darkens on my face.
The cat-claws of millennia,
the graffiti of tourists,
fade into my walls.
 . 
I, who guarded this city so long,
sit truncated now.
My frieze the sweaty flesh
of lovers on cool bare stones.
 . 
Catch me in another thousand years,
your eyes as hard and dark as mine.
See if these holes will match
the mysteries of death
and flesh on blackened stone.
 . 
Bradley Strahan
from I-70 Review, Eighteenth Edition, 2024
 . 
* a gate in the remaining piece of Trier’s old Roman wall
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The 2024 issue of I-70 Review arrived in last week’s post. Besides many wonderful voices new to me, I discovered within its pages several old friends who’ve agreed to let me reprint their poems.
 . 
I-70 Review, Writing and Art from the Middle and Beyond is based in Kansas, USA, but publishes poetry, short fiction, and art from around the world. They also sponsor the annual Bill Hickok Humor award for poetry.
 . 
Submission guidelines HERE
Purchase a copy HERE
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Messenger in Early November
 . 
++++++ – in memory of Jay Klokker
 . 
Driving past Agate Bay, I catch a glimpse
of this deer in a splotch of sun and shadow –
the brown-tail’s flanks on the edge of the road
in yellow leaves, thin branches. Las May
after your death, a bear cub loped beside my car
like a lost Labrador, seemed to disappear
under my front bumper. Slamming on the brakes,
I felt no thud, heard nothing. Amazing, the cub
as if uninjured, clambered up the ditch-bank.
Only later, after your memorial, did I reread
your last poems, that black bear nosing
at your sleeping bag in the camp site
in Arizona; recalled marmots whistling
in the pillow basalt near Mt. Baker; the grouse
thumping its tail near our driveway,
feasting on red hawthorn berries.
You noticed. I cannot believe you said no
to another go-round on the cancer wish machine,
you called it, completed your book First Stars.
On you last hike, you raced downhill
in your wheelchair, shouting. You must
be in these sun spots, mottled shadows.
Too excellent a camouflage, my friend –
thin, flickering branches, a few gold leaves,
before all the color goes away.
 . 
Richard Widerkehr
from I-70 Review, Eighteenth Edition, 2024
this poem will appear in Richard’s new book, Missing The Owl (Shanti Arts Press)
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The Other
 . 
Last night coyotes laughed
at the neighbor’s bulked-up lab restrained
behind his chain-link, his fearful bark,
their yips of liberty and mild derision;
 . 
are coyotes such demons, or just particular
about whom they allow to know them?
Or are they perhaps spirits of the other,
avatar of all we hominids in our marrow
 . 
know to fear? How to live beside that feeling?
Afraid of attack I stab; afraid of pain I cause it.
 . 
In the woods before daylight willingly lost,
soft tread, a twist in the trail then face to face –
perhaps she and I look into each other’s eyes
for two seconds, perhaps the rest
 . 
of my life; coyote impassive,
considerate, measures our distance,
our closeness, then softly pivots
and pads away, prudent, fearless,
 . 
willing to allow the two of us
to share the universe.
 . 
Bill Griffin
from I-70 Review, Eighteenth Edition, 2024
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
Doughton Park Tree 2020-09-08b

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