First race

 The first race

Third grade, Monticello elementary, I was the new kid recently moved from Sopchoppy. Making friends was challenging for this shy blond. Recess was a tough time trying to find a group to fit in with. Often I would skip and remain in class drawing with Wayne Lassiter from Lamont. Then one day at PE the coach said on field day there would be a third grade wide foot race.

I had never ran a race, especially not one with all three third grade classes combined. It was assumed from all, that last years second grade winner, Jimmy Haynes, would repeat. The day came and all the girls and boys spread out along the PE room wall. On the whistle we were to run downhill to the fence by the road, touch it and return. The whistle blew and the grass was chewed as we made our way down. I kept my eye on Jimmy and watched as he was first to touch the fence. I trailed near and at about the half way back point, he faded, perhaps starting too fast, and I picked up speed, the first to touch the wall. Fastest third grader. From then on it wasn't difficult to find friends at recess. Everyone wanted me in their group, on their team. Yet despite the fame, I still preferred to draw motorcycles and airplanes with Wayne.

Paris In Lake City

 I had look a long time in my photos for this shot. I took it on a Saturday when I was working at the Gateway Galley downtown. 

Sulphur Scribes

 Sulphur Scribes

John Clare Stokes

We were never the poets we thought, It's  uncertain any words ever fell in place, With each using of one another went to waste, The  discarded word then vainly sought.   I sat beside a flower with my pen, What few words I knew I used, Carefully composing the words I chose, Like plucking choice gold leaves from fall winds.   A cloudless sulphur lit and to her I rhymed, To me it was quite an event, It was beyond any word written, Poetical as Frost's best lines.   Then the Cranes came upon the breeze, That sound from beyond time, In itself a gathering of Nature's rhyme, Each composing upon blue paper sky effortlessly.   It was then an order became evident, I was freed from finding the rhyme, Of trying to compose  within the lines, Before me rose a curtain un-rent.   The scene I saw was of threaded light, We simply pull the needle slowly to see, Only the light flecks this side of the tapestry, Backing black yet necessary to see the other side wedding white.   We are to give sound to the unheard, Not mere poets but translators and scribes, Preserving in word His light coursing ride, Touching you, me, sulphur,leaf, cloud, bee and bird.

Dream of blue

I woke this morning from this dream 

That out back the grass was again a pool

That old dreaded feeling again arose

That the war on algae had presumed

With chlorine jugs and leaf rake in hand

The fight was on again.  

Kesl

 Thought I’d call on my old painting professor Lenny

Loved his style of such exuberant joy and glee

Our once unclad model offered fleurs to me

Sure bought back painting with cold sweat frenzy! https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/gainesville/name/leonard-kesl-obituary?id=18797762&utm_source=webshareapi&utm_medium=share_button&utm_campaign=wsapimobile_beta

Firing

 On this day in 2019 I was let go from Baya. I always took photos along the way, and they fired me for it, when someone saw me taking photos of co-eds crossing University Avenue, called it in and said I was taking voyeur photos. The same day as I was leaving Baya, Ray saw me and asked if I would like to take photos of cars for Morgan Auto. Can’t make it up. I told Ray I was just fired for taking photos, do you mind if I take photos along the way? He said not at all, matter of fact, when we are caught up, we can run down to the lake and shoot eagles. 

Ego grow

My brother has the gall to think they should erect a sign honoring him for being a DJ along with his friend James Pitts who had a tiny part in the film Avatar. I don’t even think this Eagle should have a sign. For being a pro football player? Our priorities are so skewed. 

Pieces

Wallace, you are too kind to share with me....

Pieces

Wallace Stevens.

Tinsel in February, tinsel in August.

These are things in a man besides his reason.

Come home, wind, he kept crying and crying.

Snow glistens in its instant in the air,

Instant of millefiori bluely magnified---

Come home, wind, he said as he climbed the

stair---

Crystal on crystal until crystal clouds

Become an over-crystal out of ice,

Exhaling these creations of itself.

There is a sense in sounds beyond their meaning.

The tinsel of August falling was like a flame

That breathed on ground, more blue than red,

more red

Than green, fidgets of all-related fire.

The wind is like a dog that runs away.

But it is like a horse. It is like motion

That lives in space. It is a person at night,

A member of the family, a tie,

An ethereal cousin, another milleman.

Paint me a shrimpboat

 Paint me a shrimp boat

Forever it seemed William was after me to paint him a shrimp boat scene. And so as a young teen I did and sent it to him. Roses father a master wood craftsman, made a frame. I never got to see it hung in prominence like the still life's did I painted for Grandma Bernice, who proudly hung them in her kitchen. The shrimp boat was finally taken from the mantle and relegated to the guest room floor. Grandma Boykins to the dumpster no doubt when her home was sold. And so many others sent out over the long past years, lost,relegated, the frames of more value than the work. I wish I could of said, like a Monet  or Van Gogh, they would have made you wealthy as much as they certainly enriched my heart giving them.

The grackle congregation

 The grackle congregation 

John Clare Stokes

The service was particularly uplifting

All the high notes they were hitting

It was so heavenly soaring

Gulls came from afar Spring tangles shadow and light,

Branches of trees

Knit vision and wind. 

The shape of the wind is a tree

Bending,spilling its birds.

Wendell Berry

Sand Traps

 Sand Traps

By john clare

You must forgive me as I am too easily ensnared by the past

Trapped by a boyhood some sixty years ago

I know I should avoid the circle of sand

Baited with Tonka trucks and other lures

But every time I step right in and soon I'm caught

Not kicking and screaming but blissful in the live trap

Gorging upon the surrounding steam shovels and bulldozers

With little desire for a catch and release to reality.

And is it any mystery we Pappa's build our own sand traps

Scatter about choice toy bait

In hope of luring over a grand one

From the no trespassing fences our own keep them in?

Keeping from the traps of sand they so want to

Be captured in.

Now Lexus pray

 Now Lexus Pray 

 by john clare  

 Why did you bring your Lexus 

 To get your meal today?  

Was it simply to show 

 How the Lawd takes care of YO? 

 And what of ole Walkin' Earnest? 

  He came via foot three miles away  

 I noticed that as you sped away  

 I'd like to take that Lexus one day  

 Take it down ole Walkin' Earnest's way 

 Tell him, Look here Earnest,

 look what the Lawd bought

 YO today.

In search of shoals

 In search of Shoals

Enough this calm hypnotic flow 

Deep quiet  lost in silent okeefenok

We paddled on determined

When all of a sudden 

A  deafening roaring

Blessed roiling turbulent rage

That night in fits we laid our heads.

Get high

 For over an hour I waited

Beneath the hanging shoes

No one came so I 

Decided to chew some sorrel 

A natural high

Wilson

 Halftime

Wilson from the South Pacific

Was called upon to tell of his 

Long ordeal drifting

In the ocean

The kids were not interested

Boring!

Soon Wilson they were 

Kicking.

Suwannee Maiden

 Siren of Suwannee

Myriads of eyes has she

Alluring with her palmetto lashes

Her makeup never clashing

Oh that maiden Suwannee!

The Tour de Five Points

 The Tour de Five Points 

Round and round and round the pint sized peloton spun around and around and around la Grande Boucle  Little Merckx, Indurain, Basso,Pantani, Cavendish, Evans,Hinault,Anquetil,Chippolini,Coppi and Ullrich  Only one shall don le maillot jaune  The bell has rung as eleven are on the rivets  Round about Round about round about they sweep  Rotating furiously each takes a pull  A jump and one hammers a gap  It's IL Pirata pursued by the Cannibal   When suddenly, from above a hand reaches down Recess over! teacher yells, as little Merckx,Indurain,Basso,Pantani,Cavendish,Evans,Hinault,Anquetil,Chippolini,Coppi and Ullrich sprint for the feeding station.

Hidden Williston

 Hidden Williston

Williston has been dear to me and my family since 1967 when we rolled in to the Methodist parsonage on Noble Avenue from Kentucky.  Though my fathers pastorate came to an end in 1977 and we moved to Lake City, our connection to Williston never did. 

Mrs Valerie Blackburn, who lived in the trailer court where Hardee’s now stands, beside the large Mother Wilson’s two story, now gone, across the street from the white wood parsonage, now moved out toward Ocala, told me every time I visited her and her pet Mockingbird, that she was praying I would marry a Williston girl. I always laughed it off, seeing my prospects dimming with each passing year and old girlfriends marrying others. 

But in the hidden realm, the day I met my niece Jessica’s nurse at Shand’s of UF, my sister saying, “you just got to meet her! She’s a Williston girl!” The minute we met, my thoughts immediately went to Mrs Blackburn. That was around 1986. In 1988 I wish Mrs Blackburn was still alive to see me marrying the Mayors daughter in Whitehurst Chapel by my father. 

In 2001 my father sold his place in Crawfordville and moved back to Williston to the Chiropractor Lipscombs place near Blue Grotto on 27 across from the Catholic Church. We continued to return to Williston, sadly in March of 2011 where we buried my father at the top entrance of Orange Hill, where years prior, he had purchased several lots, then all alone beside Pappy and the beloved Whitehurst family across the street. 

In 0ctober of 2017 we sadly returned to lay beside my father the best pastors wife Williston ever knew, my mother. 

And so we continue to return. We continue to note the hidden. The KFC building where my sister had her first job, the empty hospital where Melanie started out as a nurse with the great doctors McCoy, Dailey, Reddy and Martin, where I later worked in maintenance and was friends with my future father in law, the empty Holiday Inn lot where we’d go swimming, the hawk in the tree by the abandoned school for sale where I graduated in ‘73 and my mother taught, the large oak tree that fell that was once beside my bedroom window, where we placed the worms for sale sign, the linear park where once the Seaboard train stopped traffic. We see the hidden. We see Orange Hill expanding over toward Joe Smiths. We hear Mockingbirds and thank the Valeries for all the prayers.  We ride down the hill and pause way too often and say hello to friends and loved ones.

Marion gets an A

 Cormorants and moon

Watertown 

Marion and I were poised in waiting for the circling cormorants to pass near the rising moon. We saw them nearing and shot a sequence, getting practically the identical scene. Marion my student is getting quite good. I gave him an A tonight.

Moon trap

 Moon trap

Lured into a faux circling of the moon

the creature fell for the Luna ruse

Still waters shimmering doom

Another in a moon trap, it’s life to lose.

Hey piddle piddle

 Piddle

My projects would take half as long if one, I wouldn’t have to continually walk across the yard for the tool I need and should of had and two, if I didn’t have to scrounge and piddle for the right screws or nails. Since we no longer have the convenient Wilsons Ace Hardware, I loathe a long trip to Lowes. Fortunately I have a hundred years of accumulation to pick through. 

What do others do not so fortunate? Long trip!

Porter Cable

Oh fuuuuudge 

Yard work requires a much, much stronger disposition that I possess. I don’t know what causes the syrup kettle I’m trying to move to roll on my toe, I don’t know why I’m wearing clogs, I don’t know why drills strip and screws are star bits, I don’t know why I saw the power cord off, I don’t know why random things snag me, but it happens. 

One good nostalgic moment. After I sawed the power cord, I went and found my dads old Porter Cable circular saw. It cut just as smooth as when I was a little boy.

Why beautiful

 Think on these things

Before we apply our

Beautiful and move on

Think for a moment

Why beautiful?

Beautiful implies a standard.

A judgement. A choice.

A perception 

A feeling

Whence? 

Why beautiful?

Who gave this ability to

Know beauty from what?

Why, not beautiful?

Appreciate your ability

to apply beautiful. 

Don’t take it lightly.

Mark by John

 If Mark were a poet perhaps his gospel would have went thus. The title taken from the poet William Blake. Events in order of occurrence. Isaac Watts was grand at setting scripture to poetry.

Basketball John

 Basketball John

John Clare Stokes

It was probably instilled in the few months I lived in Vicco, Kentucky after being born in January of 1955 during basketball season before moving to Sopchoppy, Florida in June. It wasn’t a particularly great season by Kentucky standards for Adolph Rupp’s Wildcats, finishing 20-6 and second in the SEC behind Alabama. 

But that’s not the point. Point is, it rubbed into me unknowingly. It dwelt there when we moved to Sopchoppy and the Yellow Jackets in the old native rock gym that is now a landmark. Though I wanted to be Walt Dickson, the all-conference running back, there was also inside, Walt the basketball player.

When we moved to Monticello in my third grade year, I do not know if I asked my father, or if he too had the passion, having been invited by Adolph Rupp to say the prayer for the boys before a game, but he erected a basketball backboard and goal with swoosh net behind the new parsonage. Though I took second in punt, pass and kick and wanted to paint the Redskin helmet I won green, after Green Bay, I began to spend most of my time shooting and less time punt,pass and kicking. I finally got my first opportunity to get on a real court in a real game when the 4th grade A boys took on the 4th grade B team during halftime of a Tiger basketball game. My best friend Marc Bishop, the superintendent’s son and I led the B squad against the talented Butch and Bobby Plaines twins  of the A team. The game was frenetic, in the end we lost 7to5. I was high scorer with 3, making my first free throw. Marc had 2. 

That year we moved to Wilmore, Kentucky where my father and mother attended Asbury College. Daddy was to be the alumni director under ZT Johnson, the President and life long family friend.

It was here, as a Cub, with my two new best friends, Stuart and Steve Smith, whose dad was a science professor and coach, we had free reign of the Asbury gym. It was here, just a few miles from Mecca Lexington, that my Uncles William and Billy, living with us in the apartment out back, took me to my first and only Kentucky basketball game in Memorial Coliseum , where their friend Chuck Wade from their home in Forest, Mississippi beat Louie Dampier and Pat Riley. We got to go down to the State locker room and meet Chuck, still living in Forest. #My Uncle William hoped it would cement me a State fan. It only solidified my blue colors. 

In 1967 we moved back to Florida after two years, to Williston. Those first years in 7th to 9th grade, the passion was at a zenith. Orville Wheeler, my coach, being equally passionate, from Jerry West Virginia, was inspiring and encouraging. For a white boy, the future was bright. Then something happened. The Mighty White Red Devils played an exhibition game with East Williston, then all black, a year before segregation. I should have redirected  the passion playing on another field, but I was color blind. 

Like my days as a sprinter came to an end, taking up the hurdles, I should have seen my days as a basketball player ending. As all my white friends one by one quit, I ended up the only white player. Where I was once a shooting guard, I was now a point guard like the current Reed Sheppard who could get the ball up court past any press, only to pass it off. We never won many games. The team was too concerned with scoring stats. I was Mr Defense. 

Once a friend of my mother, trying to impress her, said, “I just love to watch your son play, now what number is he?”

My fondest years of basketball came from playing on our all white Masonic Demolay team where we were state runner ups. Likewise the many nights playing pickup games in the Williston gym with the great Kentucky meatcutter Bill Boyd, my former JV coach the great Dean Chesser, Truby English and other former players. In my senior year, I gave up track and football, which I loved, to concentrate on basketball. Even though I got the Mr Basketball award at graduation, on hindsight, the day I saw that East Williston team with Wilson James dunking and giving meaning to white boys can’t jump, I too should have taken a enjoy football and track too attitude, for it was the end of the line for a lifetime. That’s why tonight I’ll watch UK play Alabama, but I’m not going to worry near as much as once I would have if they lose. 

And to conclude, I still have that goal daddy set up for me in 1964. Times I go out to the shed where it hangs to see if it still glows a hot orange.

Deliverance

 Deliverance 

Suddenly there was this banjo plucking 

She had little knowledge of clawhammer 

She just thought it the sound of nature 

It’s quite wise to know a Scruggs from a Flatt.

To make a bouquet

 To make a bouquet 

Paul Gauguin

1880

I always enjoy a visit with Gauguin

Never know who he may be painting 

I like how he has lovely flowers always

To arrange into my own bouquet.

The silence

 It is in the silence

that my hope is, and my aim.

A song whose lines

I cannot make or sing

sounds men’s silence

like a root. Let me say

and not mourn: the world

lives in the death of speech

and sings there.

Wendell Berry

Trespassing shadow

Press Ruth Road

The 100th Revelation

 The 100th Revelation 

And as soon as

As if on a satur Day

I was in the sodra

Whether inside

Or outside

I could not tell.

Like a Degas

She was once a ballarina doll  

Seamless in her Port de bras  

We likened her to a painting by Degas  

Then the Soubresant and the ballon was gone

Then comes Jasmine

 Jasmine time

Just when I lament the Sandhill departing

the camellia from the freeze languishing 

then comes the climbing jasmine

and once more my spirit is lifting

Springs Stage

 Springs stage

Johnclarestokes  

Soon enter the dogwood bloom

Awaiting in the wings in awaiting their turn

As came the azaleas and camellia 

before them

each called to the grand stage

some to minor parts only passing

others in major roles of glory

each adding to the wonderful story

the least as vital in the aubade 

Unable to contain our applause.

The burning white bush

Live Oak

Ivermectin

Posted to have for my own reference 

Mix 3 milliliters in a glass of Orange juice and down it. About twice a month but do yall  REMEMBER WHEN the Media laughed and said ivermectin was ONLY for horses and cows? THEY KNEW it was made for people since 1987. 

Here’s what they didn’t tell you 👇

1 – It prevents the damage caused by drugs created using mRNA technology, blocks the entry of Spike Protein into cells and, if the person was vaccinated, they can treat themselves for damage already done through Ivermectin.

2 – It only has beneficial effects and no harmful effects in the treatment of the C virus. In fact, even before entering the cell, it has already destroyed the virus in the blood.

3 – It has a very powerful anti-inflammatory action against and has a powerful impact on traumatic and orthopedic injuries, it strengthens muscles and has no side effects like corticosteroids.

4 –It treats autoimmune ailments such as: rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, Crohn's disease, allergic rhinitis.

5 – It improves the immunity levels in cancer patients and treats Herpes Simplex and Herpes Zoster, plus reduces the frequency of sinusitis and diverticulitis.

6 – It protects the heart in cardiac overload. In an embolism for example, it prevents cardiac hypoxia because it stimulates the production of basic energy so that the tissue is not destroyed and thus improves cardiac function.

7 – It is anti-parasitic, anti-neoplastic (anti-cancer). Allegedly, it suppresses the proliferation and metastasis of cancer cells, preserving healthy cells and improving the effectiveness of chemotherapy treatment.

8 - It can kills cancer cells resistant to chemotherapy, defeating the resistance to multiple chemo-therapeutics that tumors develop, and combined with chemotherapy and/or anti-cancer agents, it provides an increase in the effectiveness of these treatments.

9 – It is antimicrobial (bacteria and viruses) and increases immunity.

10 – It reaches the Central Nervous System and regenerates the nerves.

11 – It helps to regulates glucose, insulin metabolism, cholesterol levels and reduces liver fat in steatose.

12 - It can be used as a prophylactic agent and has been associated with a significant reduction in infection, hospitalization and mortality rates due to C-19.

The vase

 The Vase

Paul Klee

I went to my friend Paul Klee

For certainly he had an arrangement 

All he did was give a vase to me

Now go, bouquet boy, you fill it!

Winters rose

 Winters rose

I think she knows 

this winter rose that goes

in her rhodora vase

this buds for her

To kill a reenactment

 To kill a mockingbird

I do not relish dwelling upon the down sides as there is so much of the up side worth celebrating. I have been attending the annual Battle of Olustee re-enactment in Baker County since the inception and long before the Blue-Grey Army got in on the Olustee BATTLE festival began by Vernon Douglas and the Lake City Runners Club, piggy backing generously off the events in Olustee 16 miles to the east. 

This year, with the too easy covid precautions to blame, the Blue-Grey Army put on a festival with as little connection to the Re-enactment as possible, cancelling the parade that was once full of marching confederates and union, ladies in hoop skirts and such, cancelling the skirmish around the lake, no Monitor or Merrimack, not participating in the Oak Lawn Cemetery Memorial, no Running Rebel Fun Run, moving the event away from Marion Street and Olustee Park to the crowded, I guess Covid doesn’t care if it’s a food or craft venue off Lake DeSoto. Except for the historical museum which still offered period demonstrations, the festival was little more than a food, craft and music gathering with no tie to the reason it got its name or history. 

To most, fine. What more is there than food and music?

And now to my frustration with the battle. Once you could park along 90 and walk to the event. Those who arrived early, as I often did, could park by the entrance and carry your wagon with chairs and blankets and stake out a good viewing spot. It was deemed a few years ago by FHP too dangerous to park along US90 after many years, so you now must park in Olustee and at the prison a mile east and catch a bus to the park, wearing a mask of course, due to that pesky Covid again. No room for carrying chairs and such. And following the battle, which you’d be advised to leave in the third quarter as on the commercial of being just like your parents, if you stuck around for the volley, you’d still be standing in line to catch the bus. Things that cause people to say, not again, and thus little by little it dwindles down.

But maybe that is fine. I remember when we’d gather by the monument and the ranger would walk the gathered group out to the field to watch the re-enactment.

Olustee in Lake City is dead and I’d recommend the Blue-Grey Army die as well and sink your efforts into the Pioneer Festival Chris Esing put on with such success earlier in the year.

Tears of gray

In 2013 James Rourks, Attendandt to the late Col.Bowman of the Department of the Gulf, was in tears as he visited his grandfathers grave at Olustee for the first time. Jump to 2023 and the tears for another Cason at Olustee.

Whispers

 I hear in the morning reveille

The sweet whispers from Auralea  

And in my arms will she ever be 

 As today we face the Union at Olustee