In search of

In search of Mary Joyce

In the old boarded place

Among the milk and wine

I seek the familiar face

So precious in a bygone time.

SpaceX

 SpaceX

Years hence

Someone will ask

Where were you

When MJ launched 

Thriller

and I’ll look at them

and say

In a derelict old

car dealership

Once owned by

A Powerful man

But lately the

haunt of mullet heads

who hit on girls

with tyranny for a name.

Dashboard gospel

 Dashboard gospel

Lord protect us from the

virus as we make

Our way down ninety

Give us green lights 

All the way from the 

Lobster to FHP

so we can be first in line

at Popeyes with the

dead intercom

I know you can

We read it in the word.

Finger licking

 Finger licking

You see Colonel

You don’t understand 

We waited in line 

An indeterminate time

Before we gave up

And came to you

And you have the 

temerity 

to hurry us through

Our order

I did not want fries

Or your tepid tea

sans ice

But Popeyes line snaked

all the way around 

and we were hongry

Be a little patient

And get your hands 

where I can see where

They been.

Osprey inspiration

 Osprey Inspirations

At the end of evening

Long I came to the old dock

to watch perchance 

the Osprey enters a 

dive into the water blue

to pull out with talons sharp

some unsuspecting prey

then soar over me

with that piercing stare

that says

did you capture that?

Slow to shoals

 Big Shoals

There was no map

There wasn’t even anyone

to take there

along the way

many frequent pauses

for the way is not rapid

as once was

but slow and deliberate 

slow and deliberate 

it has its advantages 

it allows one to see

to see

what otherwise would

go on hidden

White ankles

 Ankle White 

Johnclarestokes 

The white acre peas shelled....  The love apple vines staked....She finished her canning....Hung the pan and set out...and what of this quiet lady...what were her dreams....what were the heart aches...what called beyond the garden gate...

If ever she had dreams..she never let it be known.. the golden thread in the dress gleamed...long after she had gone...with the slow pull trembling...the ornate thimble upon her thumb...little practical  pleasures allowed….the lowering of the hem...the humming of the hymn…the virgin white flesh never showing....white ankles out there somewhere sunning.

No Admission

 No admittance

So much has gone behind

The locked door

I knock but no one

Answers

So much has gone on

Behind there

At times I think it best

The door never opens

Others

To kick it in

Edgefield

 At the edge of the field

 Nothing but uphill asphalt

So I took a pause

At the edge of the field

Took a deep inhale

And laid upon the grass

So tranquil

By Owl

 By owl

JohnClare Stokes

By owl 

I choose to go

Quietly

Never knowing 

What caught me

They will find

Me

A neatly compacted

Deposit of scat

And know 

Only then

It was by owl

Yes

I believe it to be

barred owl

By which he went.

Up

 Up

It's the desire of the 

Flightless

To keep the fliers

Grounded

The desire of the 

Fliers

To inspire the

Grounded 

To rise

The Lost Child

 Lost Child

Aghast! The three year young 

Claire grabbed Yeats

Tore off his covering

Clutched him to her little

Breast

My favorite book!

She exclaimed

Trotting off with Yeats

Holding him by the red

Nape of the Poem mark

Choking the life

Out of him.

Jonah in the bottle

 Jonah in a bottle 

Don't know how long

Jonah was in the bottle

Probably longer

Than in the belly

Of the fish

How these quiet

Prophets wind up

In these fixes

Is a mystery

Nineveh 

Needs a message

And Jonah is

Stuck in a bottle

Somewhere in 

Florida

In this dream

 In this dream

In this dream

I'm waking

Seeing beside me

One so long

Since grown

Staring straight

Through me

I try and touch him

But my hand

Falls upon the pillow

Beyond him.

Ole Homewood

 Ole Homewood

John Clare Stokes

It was good

As it stood

Slave Gavin built it

Turn of century

Four squared it

Lucille Towles sold it

home with ten acres

late sixties

Luther Ray grew on it

muscadine and cane

Then blight 

Came around two thousand 

Can't explain

The gone insane

Movers came

Took a year

All so dear

Cut in two down dog trot 

towed to Sopchoppy 

In a day bulldozers came

ten acres turned under

Torn asunder it

Lucille’s promise

told to Luther Ray 

Broken

Never to sell

Or fell

The old oaks

Some folks

Don't take it

Seriously

Promises

To have and hold

Til death do us part

Preferring rather

To Rip the heart

From the fat lightered

never painted pine.

Turning under

family and all left behind.

My poor shadow

 The shadow beside nobody

The shadow is not enamored

With celebrity 

The shadow cares less

If he's well known

The shadow is content

To follow or to lead

To be long and slim

Or short and squat 

To be halt

It doesn't mind

Even when the sun don't shine

upon the one he's 

Stuck with.

Midwife Missouri

 Midwife

"And because the midwives feared God, He gave them families."

Exodus 1:21.

John Clare Stokes

They were the bone lean days following

the late great war of Northern invasion,

the long drawn death thro's of a nation

but for the love of Laura, Sherman sparing,

his terrible swift sword taking Florida's life,

Georgia feeling the ravages of spurned victory,

the orange blossom never to fall into his bands of savagery. 

Into these times of lean came to be a midwife.

Sabbath days at Hopewell Primitive Rev.Eubanks would pray,

For Charles, Eliza, Willey and Missouri's little Cauley

And that day on the bare toes he would step lightly,

for these famished souls had enough already of hell and misery.

Too far away to send for Doc Ives in the first horseless Buick,

Twenty-five miles from Lake City an ocean-like eternity

by mule,through sand way up and lost on the Suwannee, 

but not the midwife the labor cries she would seek.

Beside the birthing beds from Benton to Suwannee Shoals,

Missouri the unmarried midwife was to all as a  mother,

her pleasurable sins so easily forgiven her,

Missouri Wheeler by whose hand came so many souls.

And in the dead of night along the old Suwannee river flowing,

The new mother blesses the midwife who they could not pay,

But the wages for Missoui the men found a way,

Script beyond the folding,more precious than any money golden.

As told not literal, but poetic.

Milk and wine

 Of milk and wine. In the sincere delivery of the given milk, a breeze through the open portals stirred, gently rippling over tears and wine spilling,entering all in the mystery.

After Whistler

 Today I collaborated with Whistler. Combining our images. It was a quick study. I shall return and expand just as Whistler would do.

Grand themes

 The grand themes

Things such as

Hearts aflame

Stay stoked

 Stay stoked

Said the poets

They know it

They aren’t

Wrong fellows

Setting out

 Setting Out

Wendell Berry

Even love must pass through loneliness,

the husbandman become again

the Long Hunter , and set out

not to the familiar woods of home

but to the forest of the night,

the true wilderness, where renewal 

is found, the lay of the ground

a premonition of the unknown.

Blowing leaf and flying wren

lead him on. He can no longer be at home,

he cannot return, until he begin 

the circle that first will carry him away.

Love for Watts

 If, mounted on a morning ray,

I fly beyond the western sea;

Thy swifter hand would first arrive,

And there arrest thy fugitive.

Isaac Watts

Worm man

 This worm of a man

sat in contemplation

of being a worm 

now that’s a good thing

for that’s what sets 

him apart from a worm

the ability to squirm

before the hook has 

even been stuck in

Consciousness

Compensate quick

 O’er coming

It was the first exposure 

of the day

the heron coming my way

Quickly I said

move the compensation 

to plus one point three

for lately

Shadows have been

giving me fits

and then the heron

had flown 

and I went home

CAnoe theology

 The irresistible call

CANOE

John Clare Stokes

There are five points to the call of the canoe, can you name them? There is the dream of Chestnut Prospectors, then the Allusion of rapids roaring, then the Nocturnal moon dancing in flow, to the Outward bound voyage and finally the Eternity of journey.

The long way

 The long back way

John Clare Stokes

I take the long back way

Down the Cline Feagle lane 

in the lower part of the county

Pass where Cline burned to death

In his running truck

The brick chimney marking the spot

Up the road where I see

They tore down the tenants home

Wood stacked for another’s flooring

The blooming gardenia out of place

Without a front door for balance

The way is lined with gladiolus 

Red to orange variety

The old stock

At the intersection the implements sit

Rusting through yet another season 

I enter the section of lined pine

Thinking I’m on some Tour de European

Slow in case a fox squirrel is crossing over

The end is nearing when at the Tabor Cemetery

Crows scold and head off toward Aldine’s

His road with the split rail and cane mill

These Feagle’s mostly a peculiar people

I resume my journey through their 

Ghostly Territory.

Wondering how Shadrack ever wound up here.

Ghost gator

 Ghost Gator

Wraith of waders

he bides beside me

Through deepest glades guides

Abides in shadows

Where light slumbers

Slides to stir waters darkly

Then mysteriously departs

his blazes burning

where he lurked.

Starke raving

 Starke raving 

Her husband was a violinist

Not a fiddler

First chair

She had two dogs

Not big

The kind that told her

someone was knocking

With his motorcycle 

A grandson holed up

Somewhere in back

Sponging from the dry

On the mantle framed

A daughter long ago killed

In a senior car wreck

Forever smiling in the prom photo

Pill bottles filling the kitchen table

Couldn’t afford to take them

And food

They tell me she passed away

In her sleep

Jigsaw never complete 

Grandson in back room came 

Out to tell me.

Dogs didn’t warn me.

Decoration Day

 Why! Tell me why! 

 Do the boys in gray 

 March off to die?

 Why! Why! 

 This black array 

 Stay! Stay!

 Lay thy heavy arms 

 Must Cain always cry? 

 But go the gray

 from my arms 

 Into fields from home

 to die

Good day

 The Plan

Wendell Berry

My old friend, the owner

of a new boat, stops by

to ask me to fish with him,

and I say I will-both of us

knowing that we may never

get around to it, it may be 

years before we’re both

idle again on the same day.

But we make a plan, anyhow,

in honor of friendship 

and the fine spring weather

and the new boat

and our sudden thought

of the water shining

under the morning fog.

LRS

 LRS

Johnclarestokes 

Years beyond my time in the garden

Some descendant of someone will

hear his father call the little one

to bring him the LRS trowel

and as another bulb is set in the soil

and the little boy returns to the nail

the LRS trowel

they will think what a fine tool it is 

the little one piece relic

that fits perfectly in the hand. 

The no blist’r trowel of 

Luther Ray Stokes

Ole Sopchoppy

 Of bread pudding and Fiddle tunes

Johnclarestokes 

Mary Robinson Davis Rudd  1885-1960. My fathers first appointment to the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church was the tiny Mayberry-like town of Sopchoppy in Wakulla County in 1955. The panhandle town of under 600 was located on the banks of the crooked dark waters of the Sopchoppy River, which ran into the Oclockonee River, which ran into the Gulf at Panacea. My father preached one Sunday at Sopchoppy, then the next at the county seat of Wakulla in Crawfordville.  My mother taught fourth grade at the nearby native stone school and during the day Mrs Mary kept me. Mrs Mary and Mr Emory Rudd lived next door to the church and parsonage on Rose Street in a wooden one story white cracker style house with the two front rooms off the dog trot ending in the rear kitchen. I loved the time with the Rudd's, looking forward each morning to Mr Emory showing me the rats he had trapped in the barn the evening before, saving me his match boxes and Prince Albert tobacco tins to play with.  A good carpenter, Mr Emory made me a nice wooden high chair I could use to sit at the kitchen table with. Mrs Mary and we would walk about the yard and collect the eggs the chickens had laid in the barn and under the bushes in the yard. She would then make me my favorite food of all time, her special bread pudding.  It had to be the eggs I always assumed, for even to this day, the consistency has never been matched. Maybe the ingredient was nostalgia. Mr Emory was a fiddle player in a band with his first wife Susie that played down at the skating rink across the street on the Sopchoppy river and he liked to rock a horsey me on his foot and sing an old dance hall tune, though I’m not too sure Mrs Mary approved. They had a nice front porch swing under the shady magnolia where I would lazily lay and watch as the occasional car would pass or listen to Mr Burches marching band down at the field practicing. I knew mamma would be coming soon to get me. One morning in 1960, mamma told me I would not be going to Mrs Mary's today. I remember looking out the window in our living room to their house and seeing a hearse. I had never seen one but instinctively knew. That evening mamma and daddy took me over to the house and there Mrs Mary was, lying in wake in the front room in the bed, hands crossed, sleeping it seemed. . It was one of the first death's I had seen, yet somehow I understood at the age of five. Soon after I went to stay with Mrs Willie Mae Porter and her daughters across the street, then the beloved Angeline “Plump” Donaldson, who kept me in our home until we moved to Monticello in 1963. But of all the dear ladies who kept me, none were loved more than Mrs Mary. My heavenly food I know will not be manna but Mrs Mary’s bread pudding.

One

 One

I've this warped concept

Of one sitting out there

Hanging for dear life

Upon every word

Every scene I bring to her

Famished

Thanking me profusely 

For rescuing her

From the rushing stream

Of pablum

 But then I see

In reality

She's not reaching for me

It's the damn remote

On the TV

And the walking dead

Is coming on.

Seal of a lover

 Seal of Approval 

It was approximately six on a Thursday

The committee for the Good Housekeeping

Seal of Approval 

Came knocking

They said according to their criteria

They had awarded us the 

Good housekeeping seal of Approval

For being lovers going above and beyond

The call of duty. 

The committee quizzically inquired

Is your wife at home?

When it was about that time

From the master bedroom

A voice was heard

Honey, who is it?

That the award was snatched from my hands

Rescinded in an instant moment 

The seal upon the door scraped off

The subscription cancelled. 

And To think

I was almost a Good Housekeeping lover.

Bound

 Bound

We are mostly bound books

Unread upon the shelves

Your story not interesting 

To any but you

And maybe if fortunate

One or two

Possibly your mother

The once lover

But that’s about it

Prose in purple

 Purple Prose

I went in search of

The purple lined composition paper

You once copied out the prose upon

I could only find the 

Marbled black and white books

Somehow the prose just wasn’t the

Same written in them

Something was missing

Your long hand

Your long flowing hair

Or so I convinced myself so.

Solitary man

 Solitary man 

What kind of mother

That she left her children

To another

I think it was little Elijah

Who suffered the most

His days mostly spent

Turning the cards 

Placing the Queen

Just so

The queen he never did

Know

It shows

Screen time

 I hear the ole screen creaking

and I wake in the evening from dreaming

to see who may be slipping in

but it was just the wind slapping 

I start to lift the latch to silent it

but I leave it open and return to bed

the breeze sighs and soon we return to dream.

Screen and spring

 Screen and Spring 

In our home we had a screen we children

greatly despised, for it was in collusion with

Spring  and no matter how soft our slipping

out, it would creak out our attempt to lift

the latch to escape the inside chores

mamma would inquire did you clean your room

or some such indoor imprisonment before

we could get past that infernal door of doom

and it was just as vigilant always on guard

when late in evening past curfew we’d try

to slip in not to wake mamma sleeping hard

but no matter how tenderly she wasn’t bribed 

Mamma would wake and scold us to bed

Years passed and we left that ole home

Moved into fancy places without screens

Our children pretty much left to their own 

I’d give anything just to hear that screen sounding

Joyfully telling mamma

Your little ones have come home again.

Screen call

 Screen Call

Sunday nights we would sit out

on the porch listening to the 

drums of New Mt Zion thinking

it sounded as the Waziri in the 

Tarzan movie and we would 

shiver in the swelter heat. 

Eventually the tribe would 

disperse, sparing us to have 

to tuck in early for the dawn bus.

We were timid to venture the

next afternoon across the field

in the direction of Zion, fearing 

some hungry cannibals lurking.

We never ventured too far from 

sparse back porch, where we 

knew when time came, mamma

would call us home, safe from

the drummers of New Mt Zion ever searching for a meal.

Vacant lounger

 The vacant lounger

It was pappa's favorite lounger

Long May Saturday's in Sopchoppy shade

He sat and pondered the sabbath sermon

Ants working in the sand providing the text

Long Mays since the dry rot took its toll

In March pappa went to the shades of light

The empty lounger to dark dauber homes

But toward the end of May

When thoughts of pappa held sway

We re-webbed the old lounger

Knocked away the dirt dauber nests

And fed them to the ants

That had come

From ole far away Sopchoppy.