On Panther Lane

 

Dead man walking

Leave a note

You never know

It could be your last

And you wouldn’t want

To leave your loved ones

Without some final lines

 Dead men working

I will keep on photographing

Writing so called poetry

Until the day I’m gone

You can find it in the

Middle room

Stacked quite haphazard 

Enough to make

One fine fire if perchance

It’s the wintry season

I’ve departed

White white white

 Whited mantles

If I see another perfectly arranged life

With the whited theme

I shall scream

But then

Who would hear

O the ignominy 

Of the off whites

Ashes, ashes

Ringing around the rosies 

As the Eastside PE instructor had the third graders circled, my hands tightened upon the wheel. Again I was on the Monticello playground. The instructor telling us the last one to fall down would have to tell who their girl or boy friend is. Terror seized me. 

They must not know who I secretly liked.

Under the bus

 

Both my grandfathers were associated with buses. Grandpa Orander was a bus driver and Grandfather Stokes store was a bus stop. 

Called to fly

 There are those called to fly

Before they ever take wing

In womb hear the Sandhill cry

Or feel the oceans roaring

There is a softer wind

There is a quieter song

There is a darkness fleeing

There is a coming home

Brownie and Magoo

 The boy and the magical Brownie

Each day the boy and his Brownie

would set out in wonderment 

to see what magical scenes unfolded

before them

and it wasn’t long

I’d say around seven frames

they’d find a cloud beckoning

to rest upon it for the next

Seven wonders to visit them.

Bug and Bucky

All alone home home on the range

Bug and Bucky rocked  to the flames

Seldom we thought we heard

An encouraging word

The skies were quite clear all day...

Swing high

 Swing High

by Johnclarestokes 

To the skies above with the

hawks I swing

Below my bare feet brush the

sand and stings.

Pumping hard to reach above the

dogwood blooms

Each passing arc nearer and

nearer to blue I zoom.

And as the butterfly fusses

and flits

The locust looks and his

tobacco spits

Bees buzz and struggle under

their pollen load

Dragonflies swoop and taunt

the patient toad.

I swing in ever widening circles

The blues, the golds, the browns

all one swirl

and I leap

and I am but a speck

way above the cloudy world.

I am a hawk.

Palmetto halo

 A palmetto halo

John Clare Stokes

It’s about the only crown

This shadow of a man shall adorn

No goodness found

Of all self righteousness shorn

We men the earth born

in the darkness and shadow dwell

Can the fallen leaves ever adorn

The green of life before we fell?

Stetson men

 

Nikki and Ava

 My brother once had a date. It turned into a one night stand and both forgot about it. The girl later got pregnant and had a girl. The father could have been one of several men. Lewis went on the marry and have three children.The girl by now was twenty one and she was wanting to know who her father was. Her mother gave her several names. She looked each one up and asked if they would be a paternity test. Lewis was the father. We welcomed her, especially Meme who treated her as her other granddaughters. Her girl of two at the time was the same age as my estranged grandson Nathaniel.

All this time she had grown up in foster homes in White Springs. I wish we had known her earlier.

Friday Jordon and i went to White Springs to see her.

When we camped

Camp Street

I was in the early thirties of life and still living at home with mamma in her house on Vickers and St Johns up the street. Daddy and her were still together, but his time was almost exclusively spent in Crawfordville, so there was no real urgency to pull from the best of all time apron strings. For a year or so I had my eye on Mr Emory Grays upstairs garage apartment for $125 a month, so when he called and told me it was again available, the future Morrell girl Vickie having moved out, I did not hesitate. My all the years here best friend Rick Bringger and my all time best bro friend Mark Philpot helped me load my few things and haul them up the steps. 

I was now, on my own, though I still lived on mamma’s cooking every evening. It wasn’t long before good things began happening, the best being I found in the mailbox below on the steps, a letter from a girl in Williston, asking if I’d teach her photography. A year had passed since I last tried to ask her out, she dating a doctor at Shands, so I had sort of given up. I did not hesitate and sent her a reply letter and set a time. 

And so the rest was history, good history. And it wasn’t too awful long we carried our first son Landon up the stairs, to share a corner of the one bedroom in the little crib, with Callie the cat wanting to cuddle with him. 

And it wasn’t long we knew this place with a view was much too small, so we were most fortunate to see Allan Crews several blocks up on Camp Street was selling his mothers home he grew up in, so our realtor Patty Mackey worked out all the offers and such, and before you know, we were down at Terry McDavids signing paper after paper for our first home. 

And the rest was history, good history.

And we still ride past and look up wistfully, hear mamma’s feet coming up the steps for a surprise visit, hear Emorys wife scolding him for something he didn’t do and he in his easy going way ignoring it. And we miss it, we miss the good history.

Burnt syrup

Jordon and I ground the cane, we only got maybe a gallon of juice. We set up the propane fish cooker and commenced boiling. We cooked it too long and it turned to taffy. Could barely get it out of the container. We cooked it too hot. We learn.

Cardinal

 Sabbath Cardinal

Today upon this last November sabbath

we held a brief ceremony in the crepe tree

appointing some Cardinals for the duty

of seeing to it beauty was utmost in the highest.

Of milk and wine

 The late blooming milk and wine crinoline lily

Set against the old Homewood split rails 

I hesitate to leave it in the turning chilly

The moon will rise and with it dwell.

Glory lift

 In the morning glory

It’s a grand morning story

The song all nature sings

to His glory

To this downcast it brings

a lift early

Sand lot

 Sand Lot

There is a chord that resonates within when from out of the autumn north sky soaring in the still night come the cry of the Sand Hills from their northern summer homes, arriving to spend the winter in the pleasant Florida climate. And I pause from the raking to gaze into the heaven not seeing the formation but knowing just above me circling are the cranes telling me of that longing for the pleasant places, away from the frozen stresses that would kill. And I resume raking, gathering the pine straw in circles, to gather them in the iron kettle, the smoke billowing toward the circling Sand Hill crane, a signal to them that I am below, just as last year, when as clock work, the burning began. I do not know if they got the signal or if they even acknowledged, raking silently, thinking of far off places from which we came, how if they missed the soon frozen ponds and bogs north, just as I, loved things over lands, far beyond my migration, land bound and locked in this acre lot. It will not be long before the time to return arrives, the leaves long since burned, smoke signals stored away. The cranes will stir, the land will green, when silently, upon cue, catching the scent of a northern current, one will lift, then another, and another, circling, higher and higher, calling, and they shall pass over me, silent in the acre lot, gazing, getting ready for the falling again, giving me the ability to signal them, when again, they return to me.

Thanksgiving 2024

 I opted to go with Jordon who is home to Allison and John’s. Melanie is going with Roscoe to Williston.