Swoosh

 Swoosh

Someday, far away

In the mad month of March

The boy will hear a swooshing sound

And he will look ten feet up

And wonder

Why it was the sweetest sound

Ever heard

Forever Soni

 Soni Young

johnClare Stokes

Before he set out

On his final journey

he once again took

his magic box down

And with some 

Adjustments of buttons

And bellows

He made another 

Young

There were only 

Thirty six frames

And by the time it

Came to take his

Own portrait

The winder came to

A halt and would 

Not advance

But it mattered not

He had made 

Thirty six forever

Young

And that kept

The old man 

Content

All was not in vain.

How they linger

 How they linger

One does not soon just get over things. They linger, they ring, you still sing that little I see the moon tune, you still hear the cradle creak, the walker scrape, the laughter trail away into the silent night. You awake and look at the couch, the blanket neatly folded, the cat in a deep purr it was after all.

2020 Insanity

 Isolation

Isolation doesn’t bother me. Since a boy I’ve been a loner, an introvert, content alone in the sandpile or under a tree with a pen and composition book. But most of us are not so inclined. We are social beings. We crave interaction. And this is one of the insidious things of this lockdown, this social separation. It doesn’t help matters that the local brown shirts, now little despots, have closed access to practically any outlet. Parks, boat ramps, bike paths, you name it, they deem it their responsibility to keep us pent in, until we break or go insane. And I won’t even begin to dwell upon the knee jerk reaction of shutting all workers down, forcing them to be grateful the very government has thrown them a 1200 bone, while an arts endowment center gets millions. Is it any wonder the young man, let go of his job on Thursday, went on a rampage and destroyed a local church?

But who am I? 

One cynical loner, that’s all.

Why

 Prospects promising

The two fisherman drifted downstream around the bend at Prospect Primitive on the Suwannee. Their blue laced speech carried up and over into the palmetto where I was out of sight. I and the spirits of those once baptized in the waters shuttered. Why do men profane such scenes?

Wait for it

 Let every creature rise-and bring

Peculiar honors to their King:

Angels descend with songs again,

And earth repeat the long AMEN.

Pearce wildlife guide

 This continues to amuse me. Peace has gone on to be quite the artist.

Homeson

 Homeson

John Clare Stokes

Long the mother stood

Awaiting the sons return

The sting of his dust

Still feeling

Clinging to her

Homespun dress.

Pope

The Rupture and the.

thousands of wins reign

John Clare Stokes 

Up on Pine Mountain

The fires were burning

Down in Hazard

The snake handlers

were saying

The Rattlers are

Prophesying

The soon return

Of the Baron to the Blue Nation

The moon above is shining blue

Louisville is no longer feared

Cal’s one and done gone to Arkansas 

For years they say the Sheppard’s will return 

It's will be a welcome ACC dread

Coach K will cry in retirement again

St John Pitino will sigh and say  why

Did I not stay

To see this Rupp Returning

To send to forgotten lakes of fire

The memory of the Texas Westerns 

The one shot  Laettner’s

The cursing con Hurleys

To see the banners unfurled again!

Even so

Come Rupp!

Moon hope

 Moon over dogwood

Lately I howl less at the rising moon

Oh I still sit in a quiet swoon

It's just after so long pining

There is a pathos in the whining

Or the praying

Or the wishing

Or the frail hope

So it's just a mindless watching

As if by some miracle

The moon winking

Would grant the thinking.

Alchemy

 Bleeding Camellia Alchemy

Her last words were,

"Please don't let the camellia's die"

So I resorted to alchemy

Secured a leech from the pond

To bleed the plant of the 

Poison blood

Proud in my dark

Gardening knowledge

Smoking incense sticks 

Placed in a circle round

The possessed plant

Chanting from the

Emily poetry book of

Inspircantations 

(For she was first a gardener)

And only wrote

To keep the Camellia

From dying.

Three

 

Wes

 Church of God cross

Williston

John Clare Stokes 

The boy was the high school quarterback

Like his father before, his life was sports

Figured he’d graduate and go down in lore

Join the pantheon and hear no more

But as the shepherd tending o’er the flocks

Plans from eternity were in the works

And like his father before, delivered from the drink

This Red Devil athlete with Christ did link

They say it came by hearing Billy Graham

It’s still a mystery how these men the Lord found

But those teens who gathered in their home

Were hungry for what this athlete had to say

The call was strong, the direction soon came

And the Methodist boy set out for Lakeland

To return to sit at the feet of Brother Rowell

And constantly abide through every trial

With so many blessed songs, it wasn’t long

Now the once mischievous boy was ministering

to the throng

Upon the hill, with the cross all could clearly see

A little Wes following the steps of a John Wesley.

Wes Smith

Williston Church of God

Florida Primitive Baptist Church Camp

 The old time foot washers

John Clare Stokes

 

The tired ole Primitive campers

With the dirty, callous feet

Would stoop and truly weep

Following the Lord's example

Soon came the time shares

The vrbo’s by the beaches

Feet pedicured by Vietnamese 

The ole Primitive Campers

Forever the ole bunions to bear.

Wonder Pony

 Wonder Pony

I paused by the wet field

For there pranced an old friend

As from my gaze he ran

My eyes with tears filled

The wind in his white mane

That unmistakable rocking

I know it was him I was seeing

Bought to life again.

Get over it

 Get o'er it

Sure the oak is now long fallen

With all the fond recallin' 

Firewood to warm another

Boards for some deck afar 

It ain't doing a lick of good

To ponder on the what should's 

The oak bid it's time shadin'

So quit the pity pond wadin' 

No one even cared that ole oak

Meant so durn much to 

Only This ole Stok.

Upon a blazing star

 Transfixed upon

A blazing star

It wasn't how far

To see this Swallowtail

But how near

It was all along

The short story

 The short story

John Clare Stokes

Nothing saddens me greater

than to walk among the headstones

and know only born and died on

with maybe a line of scripture

Would there a writer for every soul

to etch a book upon their stone

for when in the cemetery we roam

the details of a life we’d know. 

All deserved more than a dated line

Many a novel lies never to be read

So many pages among the dead

Oh if only scribes we could find.

Price Creek Cemetery

All happenings

 All happenings, great and small, are parables whereby God speaks. The art of life is to get the message.

~ Malcolm Muggeridge (Painting by Pat Rocha)

Mike Mike

 The Missing

It's never the bruises or the cuts

We recall

It's the kisses and caresses that

Linger

And hit us brutally 

Bruising and cutting to the

Bone

Flaying the heart open upon 

The slab

Long after the lovers gone

Frost fishing

 Frost Fishing

Robert Frost had a knife

Cold steel taking life

Robert Frost went fishing

Not for the eating

But simply for the 

Separation

One side gulping

The other flapping

Robert Frost without a heart

His knife sharp

Herons staring

At the gore

And what for?

Separation. 

Stupid 

Separation.

Kissing cousin

 Kissing Cousin

I found I've got a 

Kissing Cousin

But now I'm too old

For lovin'

It would of been grand

To keep it in the family

Only

She lives in a dang 

Mansion in Mississippi 

And I live in a hut

In Flaridee

It would of been hard

To uproot her

From our family.

To boldly go

 Boldly Go

Bold the man who

Tells the lotto jerk

Move on dude

My chocolate milk

Warms.

I listen to the wind

 I’ll be out and about when suddenly 

a line will enter my mind and whisper

then a few moments later the second 

line will arrive. By that time I’ve usually

ceased from the task at hand and I’m 

getting them down before the third

and the forth enter. It’s then the process

slows to less spontaneous effort and

it’s when the word winds have settled 

that the sonnet or even the second 

couplet comes to fruition.

But I’m most grateful through the years

of being given this inner start.

Not standing

 I’m not standing in front of

pear blossoms composing

lines in my mind that the wind

blows in, fading to leave me

with my own uninspired lines

I’m not moving to a place in

Palm Bay or from Palm Bay so

don’t miss me today or any day

I’m just a poor boy

and my story’s often mist old

With wing

 To fly as a gull his desire

To walk as a child his aspire

Hands to shovel sand

Wings to currents ascend

And it was so

Nathaniel

 To the lad of o eleven

I shall ever sing

and for the brief time

The joy you did bring.

From Jeanne and Johnnie

 Ah many the happy hour I squandered 

O’er many a Bonnie field I wandered 

O Jeanne our thrissles flourish’d fresh and fair

And bonie bloom’d our roses;

But auld lang came like a

frost in June,

An wither’d a’ our posies.

A grand St Patrick’s day from Bouquet Boy

Combine

 Combining two images.

Moody Blues

 Moody mornings

They are the worst moments

These mid-March mornings

Musing morbidly cursing my

Taming longing again for the 

old purple shades of sin

Flesh wars raging in the warm

Golden morning light

The crow diving over the 

Calm red-shoulder hawk

Making a metaphor for me

Sitting atop that pine 

While Cat Stevens I guess

Will forever chime

Oh baby it's a wild world.

The white

 The morning lights

whiteness that has touched the world

perfectly as air.

In the whitened country

Wendell Berry

Ah Aiden

Ah, today can we not stop and dream

Of a grand land of emerald green

Where yon lads chase the tide

And lassies the blush they hide

The ole home a welcome scene

The thistle but a flowering thing

Ah today, upon your green I rest

Oh Aiden, land of all the fairest

Lips kissed

 I sought to make a list

of all the lips I most missed

who left without e’en a kiss

but oh, how long the list.