No hill to die on
Each time I see these old geezers struggling up hills, I think of my friend Roger and his slow zig zag up, never walking the bike up, then his later fast gliding down the other side, leaving us, until the next hill.
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Idle speed
Idle speed
Roscoe I said, load up. I didn’t really need to tell him. He watches and knows the cues. Cameras in hand, keys off the refrigerator jingling. He’s already at the door waiting. I don’t know what his excitement is, the smells, the scraps, the territory to mark. We arrive and after the preliminary scouting out, settles for the patient looking up as the photographer waits idly by.
I suppose like me, just being idle is enough.
Sea shell station
Sea Shell Station
We pulled off the beaten way interstate on our journey from this fair Floridian state, the roar of the ocean fading. As we loaded back in toward Alabama, there in the window she was calling. It was a tortuous journey away.
Belted
Useful and uplifting
It's not the height of woke outdoor fashion, we can spot them a mile down trail, wide brim sun flapping khaki hat, eye hiding Oakley's of course, vented, various elite safari or fishing poplins, the endless cargo pocketed pants with infinite zips, the Chuuka's or Teva's or whatever sandal is the vogue. The rope belt got me across the Robinson branch once, but mostly it just holds the pants up. I'm sure it's a yuppie woke thing, but the split leather I forgot to bring.
Baker Act
"BAKER ACT"-ING MAMA
Aurelia D Wallace
Because I can't remember
What I had for lunch, they
Think I'm getting senile.
I hear them whispering
About the Shady Elms.
Good God, I'm not ready
For Shady Elms! I can
Still read Greek, I know
The whole score of Lucia,
(Though they don't take me
To music anymore, since
I've had to wear these paper
Pants). I can make Martha Washington's
Own recipe for Sally Lunn,
Without once peeking. I can
Recite the names and birthdays of all
Nine grandchildren, and I know
Franklin Roosevelt is dead.
All they ask me, though,
Is my street number backwards
And what I had for lunch, what
Day it is. Of course I know
Where I live, silly: inside these bones,
This bag my skin. No none needs
To know what I know anymore.
How is it they don't know
All days are Sunday--
As long as I can breathe
This splendid, cautious air?
Off they go
Wild blue yonder
john clare
Off they go
Into the wild
Blue yonder
Out of our
Lives to live
Alone in their
Self love
No room for anyone
And so off they go
Into the wild blue
Yonder
The sleeping little
One waking and
Calling for a Pappa
He will soon stop
Calling for
As off they take him
Into that wild blue
Yonder
Leaving us grounded
Unable to reach them
In that wild blue
Yonder
Leaving us to
Wonder
How is life alone
Way beyond that
Wild blue yonder
And how will we
Live without that
Little one
In this terrible land
Down under that
Wild blue
Yonder.
Falling
Falling
Twice in my evening mares you were falling. The first fall was by mistake and tragic.
The second fall was a deliberate swan dive
Into my arms
The long path
Scenes of dreams
They wanted
In my seeing
It was all one scene
Playing out
Around me
In the corners
Dark vignettes
Reminding
Comes the sleeping
The path to
The long
Long
Dreaming.
In the mourning
In the mourning
It's what we old artists do
Before the varnish has even set
Mourn the cracking of the paint
Lament the mold gathering
To color green everything
Dwelling long upon the leaving
Before even finishing the greeting
It's this insipid seeing past
Knowing these works won't last.
Where is John?
The community socials
Were awkward and
Uncomfortable for father
He was invariably asked
And what ever became
Of the little one called
John?
And they knew
They just liked to cruelly
Provoke him
For their sons were
Doctors and lawyers
And politicians
With splendid homes
Up long winding roads
Manicured and nourished
By the finest manure.
Mt Tabor
Mt Tabor Methodist. Columbia Co, Florida. Burned down by an arsonist around Dec 1986. Shot with Yashica Mat 124 with Plus X and developed in D76.
Discombobulated
Discombobulated
John Clare Stokes
When the bottle tree, the quail trellis, the rope swing, the syrup shed, the swing were at Pilgrim's Rest farm in Crawfordville, there was an order about them, a place, they fit. In the selling of the home place in 2000 and the year long moving so many years arranging, the tree and trellis and other items from a life were hastily set out without the careful thought. Williston never seemed to fit. The spacing was off. It wasn't the same. With the selling of the Williston farm in 2008 and the subsequent moving again, the accumulation of a life was scattered to my home, my sisters, my brothers, further diluting the place they held. The tools in the shed in disarray, the syrup mill stored, things rusting and rotting away. No place else to go. They seemed to lament the leaving Pilgrim Rest. It never should of happened. But it did. Slowly I’ve tried to reconstruct the mill and kettle, the bell, the many amaryllis scattered about, the split rails. With my passing I fear it all shall fall in strangers hands, with no clue as to their origin.
Where is your work?
move on lana dot org
And where are your works?
She says.
Right here, I say.
She never looks.
By their looks
By my works
You shall know them.
She moves on.
It was at times exasperation magnified when I once volunteered at the Gallery where I once displayed. One good thing, when the occasional customer would stroll through, you really got to know the smoke up from the stoked up. This lady was blowing smoke. She never even stopped to look at my work right before her.
Monday, April 28, 2025
Immogene
Kindred one
The photographs picked up with expectation
On my way to find the make up aisle
There you were in the card section
As we paused to catch up and smile
You spoke of the gathering around the keys
And I of lost opportunities
One a poet musically
One a poet of melancholy
Kindred ones
Humming in harmony
Mary way
The Mary Way
Have you found the Mary way
of just sitting away the day
by some still water lake
beside some slow moving stream
beneath one sure rising moon
above a pool of circling minnow
in a meadow awaiting the Swallowtail
Find it Martha
What f stop
The novice inquired of the master. "Tell me master, you come upon a man drowning in the ocean, what f stop should you use?" Astonished, the master exclaimed to the novice, "Have I suffered so long a time with you and still you do not know the sunny 16 rule?”
A certain virtual
A certain virtual
John Clare Stokes
Every time her sultry profile picture
would appear
I’d press that heart
Pack my lenses
And head out toward
the Suwannee
sure she’d be there
knee deep
Sultry siren she seemed
when my friend
from over Suwannee way
would say
She’s all the way deep end crazy
and I’d remove that heart
until memory faded
and she posted tomorrow.
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Just rocks
Along the way, when I had that other job, i would collect things. When they told me, pack your things, these are the only things I packed.
If you ever need to feel loved, let me know, I got
just the rock for you.
Sorry Maude
Cicely Maude Birley Gray
What can we say?
They tore down Joseph’s barns today
Folks around these parts
never learn
So much history burned
dozed and destroyed
Forgive us Maude Gray
This old world has just gone crazy
For porridge
For Porridge
Johnclarestokes
We sell our lands for bowls of porridge
Tear down the old homes for gain
Settle for a double wide dwelling
Pave the shady canopied lanes
Wide and free of pesky trees
Landscapes of unhindered view
Easy on the locusts passing through.
Noble Sabals
Noble Sabals
Johnclarestokes
Once we danced where sabal palms now sway
Cruising up to tops of hills we went all the way
down
Some beyond the water tower toward
Bronson's barren hills of scrub and sand
Others past the eastern other side of tracks
To Spook hills ghost light chills
A few to the Blue Grotto's air bubbles wending upward
from divers in caves suspending
One of many bravely trespassing to skinny dip in
Dens of Devils beneath watermelons
No Tiny or Gene or Luther's Lord calling could keep us
from Jackie and the boys in the band at the top of the hill after football
That certain kind of light
That shone on us
From the towers Christmas lights so innocently knowing all silently glowing on Friday nights
The sabal palms forever swaying.
Friday, April 25, 2025
Out worn heart
Into the twilight
Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
Your mother Eire is always young,
Dew ever shining and twilight grey;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.
Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will;
And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in fight;
And love is less kind than the grey twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.
William Butler Yeats
Chagall
Marc Chagall (French, born Russia — present-day Belarus; 1887-1985): Song of Songs IV (Le Cantique des Cantiques IV), 1958. Oil on canvas, 50 x 61 cm. Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall, Nice, France. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © This artwork may be protected by copyright. It is posted on the site in accordance with fair use principles.
"The stars were my best friends. The air was full of legends and phantoms, full of mythical and fairy-tale creatures, which suddenly flew away over the roof, so that one was at one with the firmament." (Marc Chagall)
Lily
Lily
Bouquet boy
Had a single lily
And he pondered what
It meant to him
Does it make him melancholy
for the past he sees
Or is it simply a thing of beauty
that he enjoys presently
Can through it he see future
possibility
Of hope that will be
It’s but a single lily
That speaks to
bouquet boy
A ride in Morgan’s Ford
A ride in Morgan’s Ford
Warner sent me to Ross Hardware once
In the rear there was plenty parking
Down Noble Avenue from the Memorial Hospital
Waved to Allen Powell at the Motel pool skimming
High School tardy bell loudly ringing
That pretty blond lady at the crossing stopping me
Past Travis' Standard busily the oil checking
Luther with Goliath at the white parsonage gardening
Near time for a french fried and mayonnaise
sandwich from Nettie at the Chick Inn
There's Jack Bowman, wonder where he's going?
Carse Oil at forty-six a gallon and rising!
The ole Seaboard Coastline blocks my crossing
Down to two box cars no problem waiting
Time for some stiff dungarees from Lewis' I'm thinking
Those pretty daughters I hope on me waiting
Dread the haircut, hope Mr Bill Griffis
dad's chair is occupied
Oh good! the Night of the Living Dead is showing
Guess Alice I'll hope to be closely holding
Scary movies at the Arcade are great
Then out to ghost light... what was it I came down Noble for?
Have I attained?
And have I attained?
Went to an ALF a few years back. I was commenting on a painting on the ladies wall. She asked if I paint? I said I do. And over her bed was a large John Moran framed photograph of fireflies on the Itchetucknee. I said I aspire to him. She said, have you seen John Stokes work?
At first I thought she meant Moran. It made my day to say, I am he.
I trust it made hers.
First cast
Watertown
Dead Heads
Dead Heads
By john clare stokes
The boy loved boogers
He couldn't help himself
In the pew, at school
He picked
Like the dog eating grass
It met some nutritional deficiency
In February of '58 his mother
Took him to Dr Head in Crawfordville
Only Doc in Wakulla County
In a grave manner
The doctor with head mirror
Peered long into his nose
Paused with a sigh
And gave the prognosis;
"You will die if you don't stop picking your nose."
In March of '64 William Duncan Head died.
He was three. Son of Thomas and Flo.
In June of '64 Dr Thomas Duncan Head was found by
His wife Flo
Drowned from an apparent Lake Ellen fishing accident
The overturned inner tube raft the evidence.
No autopsy was ordered.
He was 43.
The boy lived yet often wondered through the years,
Did they too pick their noses?
Monday, April 21, 2025
West towers
West Towers
johnClare Stokes
Earth day found us tracing a trail
far off the path in the Osceola
below in a pine forest in the shadow
of the West Tower like a large
sundial telling us now was the
only time we would ever have
alone as two hands almost met
but moved away, far away to
other loves, other forests,
other towers watching for
the spark of flame that never
came to fire.
Saturday, April 19, 2025
Where are you
Did you know that epic scenes
were
unfolding all about
your place yesterday?
We knocked and
knocked for you
to come see
You never came
I think you were
too immersed In
scrolling for
Epic scenes
Admiral pad
Admiral pad
Johnclarestokes
Quickly as one could
before the lens could
compose, the Admiral
lifted beyond the frame
to never be seen again
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Toad flax
The toad flax rolled out a purple carpet
The heavens a throne of gold
In the midst of royalty I did sit
As eternal stories began to unfold
Welcome lily
Daily I awake to find
a new lily has arrived.
With every dawning
an old friend has
returned to visit me;
Savor the season of the lily,
the memory it brings
each morning.
Richard Orander
Crumpler Mountain Memory
My grandfather Richard Orander when he was injured in a coal mining accident in Crumpler, West Virginia, started a bus line from Crumpler to Northfork. This bus from a lot in Gainesville was like the one he had. I superimposed it on top of Crumpler Mountain along with him in the drivers window.
It’s a fast reel
It’s a fast reel
Yesterday toward later afternoon the house was quiet and the memories were loud. We took our folding chairs and went down to Watertown Lake dock and sat there with them awhile until they subsided a might.
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