Long ago the infant was placed in the little Jon boat with his mother and father, and he began his first drift downstream. But the shear pin of the little motor caused the propeller to spin, so the father pulled them back upstream. Years later the boy returned to the site to wade into the river and marry, carrying his bride upstream, breaking the shear pins from his mother and father, as they drifted down stream.
We are happy to announce the soon opening of Po Camp. For one gloriously miserable week sans all the amenities your children are accustomed to, we hope to instill in them, a sense of having nothing.
No longer will they ignore you while engrossed in the I-things when you say, Buffy, did you walk the Puffy poo? No longer will they embarrass you in front of the grandparents when they say, mommy, why do they drive the used Beamer? This list is endless, but you get the picture.
John Clare Stokes
Behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof. Isaiah 5:30b
Does a new day bring light?
Has the light swallowed the dark?
Come day a squint into bright
The beams still painfully sharp.
On goes the gauze again
In streams the soothing dark
Not ready to walk in gleams
of light beams deadly sharp
Many meant for the night
Few called to walk wide waking
Freed from the terrible fright
Always giving, never once taking
In countless wards the halt
The little wars raging on
Light brigades assault for naught
the darkness ever so strong
Allured to the prospect of sight
We wave the white flag and stare
into the blinding beams of night
as captured we fall into the lair
Hand on shoulder on shoulder on
the line of the lame snakes along
Til all glimmers are finally gone
No one remaining to recall home
And in the darkened chapel quiet
Faint songs from opened hymns
A remnant chants into the night
Stokes the embers and remembers
Homewood and all of them.
Not all the latest greatest is necessary. This was taken with my first DSLR, the Nikon D40 with my 1984 180 2.8.
John Clare Stokes
Is there any particular time
When not upon the cusp of crying?
At the time of the lilies bending
The weight of blooming sending
Them downward
At the movement of clouds over
The fields with the wind whipped
Corn clinging in unison
At the call of the Coopers hawk
Circling then landing in the tallest
Pine
Looking for the jesses he wore
When in captivity
Paying no mind to the crying lad
Below
John Clare Stokes
There is a place where we can go
Into a place where we can make the
way to our own liking, where light
can be courted and in unison dance
When I am in finderland
with the old manual ways before me
I think I shall never return to the
rabid way of the autobum.
Landon more in a state of shock after the nose piercing. It is considered a high honor and forever identifies Landon with this Wano tribe in the high mountains of Papua, New Guinea.
Then landed Pashtun
Queen of the Lodi race
Ancient alien beings
Fluent in the Dari dialect
To serve man their message
John Clare Stokes
We thought our works would last
The bold colors so lovingly applied
But oh how the hues did subside
to white canvas of a double coated past.
It was interesting, I took a copy down for the relatives to see the photographs and story, how one, even with me opening to the page of the story, had no interest, and said, I’ll look later.
Goes to show, a photographer is not even a photographer among his own, or something to that affect. You can lead a donkey to water but he has to drink? Don’t show your prints before three glasses of wine?
And what shall we create today?
Or shall we just scroll the day away?
Get off that lard laden posterior
Form a band and rank a superior!
John Clare Stokes
In innocence where once they leaned
to steal their first kiss deep beneath
their feet a rumbling earth gave rise to
coal to warm the homes upon the steep
holler steps the old Orander buses rusting
beside the narrow road that carried the
fathers and the brothers far within the
Crumpler mountains returning to the shrill
whistle of miners shifts ending, unrecognizable covered in coal dust
a mass of one shuffling men all laboring
below while above in white snow lingered
two near the stucco fence that kept them
separated daring never to cross for
Ethel saw it all from her upstairs room
the daily coming and the going of who
was returning from Northfork and who was
going to Bluefield even down to hearing
the soft purring in the cellar dank, lapping
the milk stolen from the ice box while
Ethel ironed the bus mans clothes over
looking the first generation of the Italian
family in search of a dream within the
coal seams and steal perchance their
own first kiss to start a family living in
the yellow company home and if by hard
labor they gathered enough script they
too could move up the Mountain into a
house of blue where from their up stairs
windows they could count the coming and
the going who was meeting who by the
yellow stucco fences below to steal their
daughters away, far away from the
separation of their fences, of the
rumblings deep beneath their trembling feet.
The entrance to my mother’s childhood home in Crumpler, West Virginia. Mamma told of her first beau, a young Italian lad.
John Clare Stokes
by night the broken men
would sip within the cemetery
of Mann atop the hill overlooking
the dying town where once the
coal they said would never end
lamenting or celebrating
we never knew
we only knew that they were
up there
like the ravens in the trees
leaving their droppings
too poor to be buried atop
the cemetery of Mann
moving on come the dawn
into the hills and the hollers
living off the welfare dollars
high above the dying town.
On a hill in Bluefield, West Virginia is the Mann family cemetery where derelicts like the drink.
went about spreading seed
others tell of a Bouquet Boy
Who went about gathering joy.
Psalm 97:11
Johnny went about the land
Spreading beauty for all to see
We just couldn’t understand
How beauty sprang from the ugly
Johnclarestokes
What were you doing on
your last Wednesday fifty-four
years ago?
Did you spend most of the day
under the pecan out front,
in the stationary conversation chair
with the broken back?
Did you piddle in your garden
beside the out house?
Were you by yourself most of the day
with Bernice at the school lunchroom?
Did the sons William, Billy or Jimmy come by?
What of daughter Mary?
Did Luke, Curtis or Marzell call or write?
Irene or Hazel, your first daughters by your Ethel Marie
So pretty she was
Did they come from Forest to visit?
What about the Methodist pastor across the street?
Did he wave to you on his way to mid week
services?
Were there warning pains you just chalked up
to a hard Homewood, Mississippi life?
I was only fourteen in Williston, Florida
I would have taken the Trailways out to visit you
Like we used to do
Had I known it was going to your last
Wednesday.
Pulling up with Roscoe at the Watertown lake dock, we surveyed the vehicles to see whom we may recognize. One we miss seeing is the Nissan Frontier that meant Bill Chandler and Sally were already there from their Sunday morning ride through the Osceola Forest.
New friends now take the place that Eagle Eye once took. We know there is probably an Eagle out there in the trees along the bank, but without Bill to point them out, we don’t know.
Artist
Needs to carry
With him
His means
Of inspiration
For me
It's the old
Thirty-three
I lug along
It's portable
And I can wind it
Like the one in
Out of Africa
Even have a long
String
So when I'm
Between shots
Chimping
I can play
The Glen Miller
And soon
I'm jumping about
And cavorting
Imagination
Gone wild
Imagine that
The Dying Child
by John Clare
He could not die when trees were green,
For he loved the time too well.
His little hands, when flowers were seen,
Were held for the bluebell,
As he was carried o'er the green.
His eye glanced at the white-nosed bee;
He knew those children of the Spring:
When he was well and on the lea
He held one in his hands to sing,
Which filled his heart with glee.
Infants, the children of the Spring!
How can an infant die
When butterflies are on the wing,
Green grass, and such a sky?
How can they die at Spring?
He held his hands for daises white,
And then for violets blue,
And took them all to bed at night
That in the green fields grew,
As childhood's sweet delight.
And then he shut his little eyes,
And flowers would notice not;
Birds' nests and eggs caused no surprise,
He now no blossoms got:
They met with plaintive sighs.
When Winter came and blasts did sigh,
And bare were plain and tree,
As he for ease in bed did lie
His soul seemed with the free,
He died so quietly.
Seth Thomas
Has determined
To stop perpetually
At a half past
4:36
We have no key
To revive him
So twice a day
We visit him
And remind him
He is right on time.
It's the least
We can do
For all the times
He kept us
On time.
It was a year after the passing of my Uncle William Clark Stokes, when in 2017, in honor of our Stokes relatives having a reunion in Homewood, Mississippi on this day, I displayed the remnants of my grandmother, Ethel Marie Wike Stokes, born Jan 28, 1899 in Lexington Co., SC and died Aug 1, 1937 in Homewood, Mississippi. My cousin Ethel Jeanne Bradford Rowland, the daughter of Esther Irene and Joe Parks Bradford, her mother my daddy’s sister, gave me the shoes, a shawl, leather gloves and her ponytail at our last years reunion. Esther and Earnest William were married on Dec 18, 1914 and had five children, Earnest Curtis, James Marzelle, Hazel Marie, Luther Ray, my father and Esther Irene, Jeanne's mother. My mother was the last link to this original Stokes family as Earnest remarried Bernice Beatrice Boykin 17 Feb 1939 and had William Clark, Jimmy Boykin, Billy Ferrell and Mary Carol, of which only Mary still survives. Ethel Marie's father, Jacob Wike was a Lutheran minister, my father and Billy Ferrell were Methodist ministers.
Of the
Stokes Reunion
Four years ago
the remnants of the
House of Burgundy
Met in the backyard of one dawg
Down in the hail state
Of Mississippi
To lament upon the latest
Removal from the series
By some stealing Louisiana Tigers
To gnaw upon batter fried crappie
From the
Reservoir
And talk of boorish things
Like the State of the nation
The stock market
The retirement
For they lately
have no leader to turn to
To get his wise perspective
Upon the situation
It doesn't matter
The Master ingrained in them
Eternal confidence
That In the next season
The end all of all seasons with
The latest batch of signees
That Bulldog
Nation would rise so far above
This backyard in
Hattiesburg
You could see the lights
Of Dudy Noble
From even the darkest parts
Of Oxford
Awakening even
The Hail State prophet
Holed up in a Homewood cave
Awaiting the second coming.
wrote of the summer lilies
I went to Emily for surely Emily
told of the bee among the lilies
I went to Thoreau for surely Thoreau
lived less desperate by the lilies
At last
I went to you for surely you
would abide with me in the lilies.
John Clare Stokes
He came upon the keys to the garden
Tucked long away in the tin box
Tarnished and dusty with the closed
lost locks
In brittle leather pouches on soft brass
hooks hanging
Once upon the hinges the gates swung wide
the ole blue Ford tractor passing
through the unlocked gate to unturned fields
Neatly hung in the shed the
tools to abundant yields
the little boy hoeing hard at the Gardeners side
And he would send the boy with the keys
the Gardener waiting patiently
in the furrowed row
To the little one which keys he must know
his first prayers, “dear God, the Gardener
depends upon me!”
And with a sweet click and quick return
He ran with the right tool for the seed
The Gardener pleased with the
little boys deed
As wide eyed there was so much to learn
And so the keys to the garden are in his hands
the old Blue tractor waits for him to
find the key
But the gate is long gone along
with even the property
The Gardener rests in the cool of eternity
I trust the Master understands.
The wonderful journey with Chagall
(Not the photo entered in the show)
In Itchetucknee
I tried in vain to explain the attempt to take it all in, and they just said, it would still be there tomorrow. But I was here now and today it must all be taken in. So I returned tomorrow and sure enough, it was gone.
Calling all mules
Halt ye fools!
Calling all mares
Cast your cares!
Calling all donkeys
Why kick ye!
Calling all cows
Tarry but awhile!
Calling all goats
Halt your boast!
Calling all sheep
His word keep!
Calling all men
Revive Round Top again!
I do not blame thee
Times I too grow weary
Of carrying the current
And just desire to dry up
Into a trickling stream
Where only water bugs
And tadpoles can swim
Grounding the kickers and
The paddlers always loudly
Intruding over you
Go ahead Suwannee
Lower yourself if you need
Make the vapid conform to your speed.
In the stillness of the early
mornings first light
Before the wind begins
it’s swirling of the rays
Over the old Columbus
incantations are prayed
the rain waters are so smooth
it’s not long the Homewood
throng comes for a spell
today with us do you come
to dwell?
the scene is so inviting
Soon, pappa Ern, soon.
Watching over the cucumbers
climbing up the hog wire
A familiar figure I see often
in the back corner of the garden
Oh, that’s just the scarecrow!
I just nod and agree,
You can’t convince many
of mystery.
John Clare
On the wood worn
the children whirled on
whirling to the hymns of old
spinning graces golden
we gathered the dust
laid it upon the altar
precious glowing pure
offerings worth much.
Johnclarestokes
Seems lately I am are down in the crawl space
Down low creeping lest the head hits a beam
In search of the waters continued leaking
Down low the pipes trying to trace
Above the ones your presence enjoying
The love to you they have given
But you’re in the cool sand crawling
while above for the water they’re calling
Seems it’s in the dark of the crawl space
Where into the low we are so often going
that we at last find the quench for the thirst
a thirst not found in the mending of pipes.
A sturgeon leaped
And then I waited
Camera poised
For another
And I cramped
And gave up waiting
So up the top of the
Boat ramp
Getting in the vehicle
I hear
A sturgeon leap
Few of us recall the old paths
Once so well marked and open
When came the lean years
The neglected days
When we no longer knew the way
New paths were blazed
Straight and to the point
Uninspired and sterile safe
And so we trudged and tramped
Where once we meandered
Merrily
Then came one who knew
The old crooked route
Who mended the fallen gate
Opened just enough the path
And though few still choose
This longer winding way
It is there
And not lost to the one
In need of some wandering along.
And we return
To the source of
Long ago yearns
The fields we lay upon
Forbidden then
But we were young
And fields did not sting
We were immune
Love our overcoming
Histamine
Awesomeness
Even when
You piss
Be a star
Player
Even on a
Team of
Suns
Be full-speed
And you
May just win
This lucrative
Position
Just send us
Your best
Self-centered
Sales pitch
In one paragraph
Of course
With that
Unforgettable
Resume
Can I go pee now?
It's not wise
To take up
Poetry in the
Heat of rhyme
By line if you
Haven't
Found sonnet
You may as
Well prose up
And die.
I did not mean
To applaud your
Fall
The backflip
Down
Was wonderful
I gave it a ten
Shows you
What men
Know of diving
And falling
Of knowing
When the pools
half empty
Or totally.
Aligned
Just in time
For the end
Of time
Glad I was
Here before
The spinning
Out of alignment
Then the
Hurling us
Toward to North
Pole only now
Antarctica
Giving us relief
In this heat
Kingdoms come
Just when we
Need it.
I stood at the edge of the puddle
Pondering the path of the herons feet
Circling about the reflected sun
And I wondered
Why man would step in it
And intrude.
I can vividly see the day in the grape arbor chapel daddy constructed in his backyard, where mornings he’d sit and meditate, often upon a sermon he was to deliver that Sunday. I do not know what he told Landon that morning, I was out of earshot and did not want to intrude upon the conversation.
It’s now going on ten years since daddy went to Orange Hill, ten years since hearing any word from Landon. Father’s Day is one of those days of hope, that we will get the call, the card, the message upon the messenger, but we kind of know, like daddy resting with mamma at the cemetery, some things await the resurrection day.
john clare stokes
They often ask in cliche tones if only walls could talk
And I tell them again, they do, you just weren’t taught their language
The manner in which they speak,
Continually telling those who know, with every creak in every shadow; telling you,
Take the time, stand ever so still, perhaps you’ll discern;
Listen, from the cool sand below the porch, the sound of playing, the lift of laughter:
The peeling paint above revealing the layers of many cheerful coming over greetings,
The haint blue porch ceiling, the spooks confusing,
not wanting to be sent into the water,
off the silver now brown tin the rain pattering in unison
to the old dog fennel hounds howling to the familiar tune.
In the crisp fall the old screen door spring snapping open and shut,
The voice to the ones in the field loudly calling them in
Some summer sultry days the conversations swell louder than the myriad cicadas dictating the words,
Rising to abruptly fall in silence as the invisible
conductor lowers the limb wand.
In winter you can hear the burring words in the chattering chill
Swear from the cracked chimney a fire was yet glowing
Sending sweet aromas of curing one could cut and taste,
the front room always kept warm for the ones
outside wandering afar
Wondering if the inner wars they were battling would
ever come to terms of peace
The smooth glass door knob turning in the evening gloam
Those huddled about the hearth determined they heard the words of one long ago journeying
But it wasn’t the traveller returning after all
It was but the talking walls
Yes, the echoes off the walls telling it all.
Gum Swamp Rd
Burned down
