Moo!

 Moo! Didn’t mean to scare you.

Under 8

 Under 8 stay forever

Deliver us

 Suwannee Mares

End of the line

 Trick or Trestle

Old rail tie over the Suwannee at White Springs

Bloody paw

 Bloody paw....late nights along Roline banks...from the murky does crawl...the worst of haints...the three pawed leviathan...hissing who took my paw...who took my paw....

Turn out the lights

 Some things I've learned

Jack O Lanterns are dark

When no candle burns

Family we think will never part

Halloween it full of trickery

Witches are often quite pretty

Candy dishes are eaten completely 

Before the first treater walks briskly 

Fall leaves even turn in summer 

Is it any wonder

Come the All Hallows' night

We turn out all the lights?

Downy boy

 Downy Boy

I think if I were with wings

I would not be affiliated

With the pileated 

His fiery, flamboyant red

His constant cackling

Nor the crow

A know it all

Nor the red-tail hawk

Again

Always having to squawk 

And I feign to diss

Their purpose

Their ways are just not for me

And I'd be hard pressed

To find a bird that's best

Perhaps the Downy

Not too showy 

Just a tad of red

Common and looks like a miniature hairy

Of which I am not

Often mistaken for a 

Sapsucker 

Who drill the parallel

Holes in living trees

To feed on sap that

Drips so gewey 

Or perhaps a turkey

But not a Jake or a Tom

Always looking for some

Oh, just little, quiet 

Downy!

Ogden Road Treatise

 Ogden Road treatise 

Seems I’d keep the Suwannee scene long

It was my favorite scene i said

And the poem was one particularly fond 

But neither inspired or led

To the heights I dreamed

It so seems I dwell in a land alone

Those tell me do not post these scenes

And so I do not seek the places drawn

The joy of inspiration it brings

They are tucked deep within the secret 

I shall not help the blind again see

They will just have to grope darkly.

We see darkly

 We live in what we deem

Sunlight bright

But it’s just the glare of night

We do not see clearly at all

We peer as through a veil

A glass of deepest hue

There is a certain kind of light

We perceive beyond the night

Faces close as can be pressed

For but a glimpse

A drawing near to

 the figure of one blessed

Who dwells within the light

Of His own eternal glory.

Thinking of 2009

 Passing the angel art on the fence yesterday, the poem from this day in 2009 immediately came to mind:

Sephiroth Sonnet

Dear Yahweh send an Uriel this night

From the southern heavens fly our way

From your Holy presence flaming light

Take our prayers to your heart we pray

On heavenly heights one mighty stands

With precious healing sent from our God

Grant us mercy to our outstretched hands

Bud anew upon this dry and withered rod 

Come Michael, O warrior of God grand

Smite this plague that thirsts to kill

Blood of the Lamb, cover this dark land

with celestial healing may lungs so fill

Come Gabriel, Come Michael, Uriel do sail

Oh Holy God, may your heavenly glory prevail!

One night stands

 One night stands

John Clare Stokes 

For one night we allowed ourselves 

to return to the field of play

bringing the ball up the court

for the brothers in red

Galloping down the field in

the loose fitting jersey 

Splitting wide in the homespun

Cheerleading uniform

Heading up the hill in the Charger

out to ghost light frights

Not daring to ask her out in our shyness

Taking a half century to muster courage 

But by then what does one do

when all the places to go are gone

even the very school and the home room

to return to on Monday 

Your friends anxiously waiting to ask

What did you do

How far did you go

And you lie and of course say

All the way to State.

Upon the 50th high school class reunion

Low the lake

 Low the lake

We were on our way from forty-nine...upon the intersection of Low Lake and Bulb Farm roads...the old Spanish style church was still standing....eventually crossing US90 and going into Wellborn...stopping at the Jiffy Store for the drink and ice cream...Roger would catch up on his girls....he knew all the clerks.....Bob and I would lag behind...Roger kept an up tempo pace on the Vitus....I had the yellow Cannondale...Bob the Super Sport Schwinn....we finished up at Bob's no A/C trailer off Turner Road in Lake City...it was a typical Sunday afternoon ride of over forty-nine miles to forty-nine and back....Roger like the church no longer stands…the  Jiffy now closed and the girls gone...Bob... was lost in a world of fading memory...making it to age ninety…..mostly spending  his last days reminiscing...along with me at near seventy and rapidly  keeping their pace....

None the sun

 None the sun

Johnclarestokes 

Saturday we counted

As a day of a peaceable existence 

Earnest and his hens

Conway and his hens

Free ranging without fighting

Though our gridiron teams lost

and Melanie fell and hurt her foot

she still made us pancakes and bacon

Roscoe and I spent time at Watertown

with Kevin and Marion

both fishing as squirrel arrived

to talk of magnet fishing

the anhinga and cormorant catching 

while three eagles were spotted

without Bill Chandler whom we missed

and a pond slider scared Roscoe

off the dock

after filling up with gas and kitty litter

bought for Mel

my sister came by for me to 

draw and cut out some big scissors

from cardboard for Halloween 

then all the chickens sans two

who roost in the trees

were led in the pen I spent time

rearranging 

in hopes they decide eggs

to lay on the next sunny day.

Midterm

Mid Term 

Johnclarestokes 

Come ye Triumphant sons

Our homeland burns

The blue invader comes

For kingdom come we yearn.

Cotton Field 

Providence

Old Kentucky

 Old Kentucky

John Clare Stokes

Let me return just once more

to the old Kentucky I’ve longed for

so long, the place of my first dreams

the Jessamine streams and woods

of fall, where we would walk in search

of the rabbits hidden by the slate fences

where we’d sit and rest for a spell 

as the long whistle from the coal train

strained the cool air to make it over

the High Bridge into the pristine white

fenced thoroughbred farms where the

Chestnut steeds reposed in lush retirement 

while all about the countryside on every barn 

wall and driveway, backboards were kept

in top condition, nets unfrayed and white

as into the night, the sounds of swish was

heard, a ritual repeated all across the 

commonwealth, the hope in every boy

to be among the number with ole Rupp

and his runts on the hallowed hardwood. 

Let me return just once more.

Whence the pew

 Whence the row

John Clare Stokes

Do you recall who it was who

Sat upon row one

I do

Do you recall who it was who

Sat upon row two

I do

Do you recall who it was who

Sat upon row three

I do 

Do they recall who it was who

Sat upon row four

I do

It was me

Half past Cheely

 Half past Cheely 

John Clare Stokes

Once there was a time upon which you could set your watch in Williston

When Nettie Griffin and later NE would arrive at the Chick Inn

When one of Charlie Lewis angels would be at the dry goods

Mrs Valerie Blackburn would begin painting with her pet mockingbird 

Travis Harris would pump some Standard premium for Chubby Pettaway

Doyle Crosby and Rossi Davis would arrive to repair the tube TV

Bruce Smith would grab his racquet from Crabtree’s and head up Noble

When the Seaboard would sound to slow the traffic down

When JH would come walking all about town.

It was time to…

Washed up

 Washed up

John Clare Stokes

Sometime in the moonless night

They washed up

High tide bringing them in

Deposited beside

Yesterday’s sand castle

Now more a little mountain

range in resemblance 

In the morning dawning

They seemed just sunning

but the dog knew better

The fiddler crab too

We could only surmise 

Rip tides

Castaways

Lovers

It’s the mystery of the sea

They looked so happy.

Buck fever

 two bucks worth

Fortunate I was to spot these two bucks lounging in the shade. Fortunate they were I only had camera in tow. I have for the record, though being a hunter of bucks in my teens, never killed one. After many years of therapy in the Betty White-tail Clinic,  I was finally cured of Buck Fever.

Merrily down the stream

 By paddle

By Evinrude

By saddle

By tube

We journey

Merrily

In dream

 In dream

by john clare

I cannot escape this stream

forever taking me further

down in the strong current

toward an open gulf 

depositing me to bob

in a tide of the moons clutch

this dream of making it

upstream just once

past the Dottie tupelo

we once measured 

exclaiming it was a record

tree way up here alone

on this upper Suwannee

sending her jams down

to sweeten the journey

jars upon jars of the 

spread upon the sands

to sustain those journey

struck longing to return

 to their Dottie tree.

Harlot Route

 Harlot Rout

Must the Harlots always win

Taking at will the fatted men

Making no distinction

Of age or ability 

To function

Just taking the money

Without compunction 

Must the harlots always win

Grinning from the screen

In unseen dens of home

Alluring the gawking in

Giving in to the sin

Must the Harlots always win

Taking all the men

Leaving them but shells

Of guilty Deacons 

Seeking victory over

The overwhelming odds

With God their conquerer 

Kicked to the curb.

Kentucky

 On the old Harrodsburg pike 

Coming out from Lexington into the pastures of

thoroughbred chestnut Churchill Downs dreamers

grazing, the Scotch Irish stonemason hewn fences snaking by Jessamine stream and rabbit trail beneath the bared mulberry and oak

trees of October, a welcome chill in the air, and it was good

to once again to be in search of those so missed in my old

Kentucky home.

Frosty hand

 With frosty hand 

Yes, the Year is growing old,

And his eye is pale and bleared!

Death, with frosty hand and cold,

Plucks the old man by the beard,

Sorely, sorely!

Auden 

From the Halloween series

Florida fall

 Florida’s fall

I’d say that Florida’s falls are the best of all

For while all flock to the mountains tall

with roads clogged with gawkers rushed

we can meander in the uncrowded brush.

To a garland maiden

 A poem-a-phrase (paraphrase) of Rev 12

Suwannee re-fall

 Suwannee re-fall

I recall the wondrous fall

When all the golden hues would draw

Me to walk along the crispy trail

Winding along a lazing Suwannee

Magic frame

 The magic frame

We are in our work

Our works in us

We are our work

Our work is us

After shadow

 Alter Shadow

I'm not worthy 

Of my shadow

A much better

Entity than my

Reality 

Taking deep 

Concern for

Leaves of fall

I would let them

I do not care

Bare your branches

To me

I offer no sympathy

But not my

Shadow

Humbly below me

Oh to learn from

My humble companion

I would be such a

Better reality.

With me

 With Me

All day she told me

She could sit and

listen to the poetry

And I had just enough

audacity

to believe her

so I stacked deep

the volumes of

Clare 

Yeats 

Burns 

Stevens 

even

some of my own

and waited to read the one

that began with the line:

Maid of the wilderness,

Sweet in thy rural dress,

Fond thy rich lips I press

Under this tree.

then:

I thought of your beauty, and this arrow

Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow.

to:

Come, let me take thee to my breast,

And pledge we ne'er shall sunder, 

And i shall spurn as vilest dust

The world's wealth and grandeur!

finally:

God and all angels sing the world to sleep,

Now that the moon is rising in the heat

And crickets are loud again in the grass. 

The moon burns in the mind of

lost remembrances.

And I would have read them all

Had we but the time

But came the arrow

the vile dust

the heat

and this Robert Frosty 

simply melted away.

New creation

 Redemption deception 

Would the redemption could

open men's eyes

To the finer things

To which they were formerly

Blind

Perhaps in time

Some an eternity

Show me more of the

New creation

Not the continuing

Of shooting moccasins

And white tails

And foxes 

And rattlers

Of continuing in your

Former instinct 

It stinks. I'm perplexed

Why God's elect

Selects 

What purpose is a

Snake

But for target practice

Glad the rest 

Of Gods creation

Doesn't have to abide

By their selection

We'd all be in a frying

Pan

Deer Boy requiem

 Deer Boy Requiem 

John Clare Stokes

I see they finally got

 You deer boy

Oh boy

One-hundred and twenty five

Atta boy

Like a lots

And way to go's

Later 

Hung you for all 

To gawk 

Sorry for all this

deer boy

Granny never wanted

That deer blood 

Transfusion

You were not meant

To live unhunted

You were a deer

Not dear

No longer a little Flag with 

Spots beneath the palmetto.

The touch

 It must have been as in dream...I was there..surrounded by hanging beauty in the gallery...when...upon my right shoulder...a soft touch....as if from the painting...the tender 

hand extended...the gallery walls could no longer contain me...I was drawn... drawn away from the caress....and found myself...upon the banks of a dank lake....where the rays of lingering light...were as your fingers....receding into the memory of a caress.

Who buzzes

 Who buzzes there?

Only the gone hear

And heed the ring

Slowly opening

I enter

Welcome home

What took you

So long?

The lasses

 Do I so compose for the lulled masses?

For fickle fame and fleeting adulation?

Never! But for the fair hair lasses

Imprisoned in towers of their making.

Blue sky

 Last kind deed for a friend

The butterfly who could not fly

Asked the cyclist speeding by

How about a lift my friend

The breeze I’d love to feel again

Hop on said the cyclist kind

Soon the blue sky we shall find

Sanity Fe

 Sanity Fe

There was once upon time

I knew it’s time

When upon politics i’d entwine

To load the kayak 

And sanity soon

Trickled back

Santa Fe

The balms of Gilead

 Amid the balms of Gilead 

Fridays can be days one looks forward to or days we dread, as we have that sixth sense, today they fire me, or the all come crashing down reality, unexpectedly, they did. It happened for one such. It’s happened to me, more than once. You never handle it gracefully. You fill your box and awkwardly go. 

And so all Friday, I dwelt beneath the cloud. 

Toward the end of day, finishing up at Dacier in Dowling Park, there in a side room off the main desk, an older gentleman was crooning on his guitar to the elderly lady residents. Love songs. But then, he began to sing the old hymn , the Love of God. I lingered. It was the balm from Gilead needed. I trust my friend with the box of belongings found her balm of Gilead too.

In the strut line

 In the strut line

There I was suddenly on the strut line

 Not a lick of camo on to conceal me

I dropped to my belly just in time

Setting the camera by feel blindly.

And so they passed within a few feet

They never even took notice of my clicks

Feathers iridescent in the shaded heat

I finally rose and took home several ticks.

I hide

 I hide myself within my flower,

That fading from your Vase,

You, unsuspecting, feel for me-

Almost a loneliness.

Emily Dickinson

Suwannee Shoals

 Little shoals

Suwannee

Seems it’s going to be a good day

For a slow Suwannee walk along

The moon is new, the rains moved on

Perhaps we’ll meet along the way.

Judy in the mists

 Tracks of her   by john clare  

 Osceola and his friends in her woods still roam...Mostly along the trail of deer and bear...In unseen silence I know they are there....Its but a  faint whisp carrying them along....Early if you come just before the dawn....before the lifting of the misty....You can see the tracks of Judy....softly with her puppy tagging along....

Deer boy

 Deer Boy

John Clare Stokes

Deep in Impassable Bay 

the Deer Boy lays beneath 

Palmetto and pine straw

Spots upon his yearling

Back blending with the

Sun specks, as he curls in slumber, never really sleeping, always attune to the sound

of the baying hounds or 

the panther sneaking around.

It was not always so with his

offspring, for one day long

ago a most peculiar thing 

occurred at the mobile blood bank on Baya when this great, great vagrant, decided upon a transfusion to make some money, and in the confusion, the neophyte technician stuck the needle and drew the blood from the buck upon his hood. It was this blood that went into his great, great granny and in the ensuing next, next conception, there came forth the deer boy, more at home within the bay than on  the Baya, a new breed if you will, one who had no heart for the kill, the trophy tackydermy  head over the mantle, the four wheelers in the yard, the hounds in the pen, the feeders, the corn plots, the tree stands, the whole durn things. And so they hunt this deer boy relentlessly, knowing this deerboa virus cannot exist in a world among us of men who live upon the venison. It would upset the very balance of their nature, to nurture, to not dwell continually, thinking, plotting, savoring, striving, killing. And so the deer boy dwells in two worlds, both of which he knows would have him either raw, fried, stewed, jerked, smoked, bar-b-queued, skewed or simply shot for the sport of it and left for the turkey vultures.

Goliath

Goliath

He was the runt of the litter of boxers and Artance Raker of Shadeville gave him as a puppy to my daddy in Crawfordville for he couldn’t keep up and he didn’t have that smashed in boxer nose or those clipped ears. But what Artance missed was lil Goliath had the best disposition and showed it by quickly winning us all. We gave him several pet names, all to which he responded, Bosepbus, Rackisnap, Bo, Bob White, Lithy. He was so highly favored he rode shotgun or else he’d nudge his way into your lap, wherever the family went. About the only flaw I ever saw, or was it, was how, when we lived in Williston, when upon the long chain by the parsonage, and the brothers playing basketball across the street would have the ball stray toward him, he wouldn’t let them get it. They’d holler until someone heard and would come out, crawl under the house and throw it back. I don’t think the parsonage committee cared for him and I recall a few times a brave spokeswoman would say we must get rid of him. Goliath didn’t like those chained up days. When we moved to Lake City, at the parsonage on the lake, growing old, he whined one day to go outside. He immediately ran out and into Alligator Lake, catching an otter. Then, at the old home on Vickers where we had moved after my father retired from the FUM, down with dropsy in his legs, Bosepbus whined to get out, going immediately to uncover a huge frog in the bushes. The next day, unable to get up,  Dr Smith  cried as he put him to sleep. We carried him up to Crawfordville where he didn’t have to be confined on a chain or small yard and made him a fine resting place under the cool azalea’s where he loved to lay. Good runts don’t often come along. Goliath was one fine giant of a runt.

Moon mallow

 The moon mallow 

We sat beneath the burning moon

As a marshmallow over the flames

Til all was dark and all remained

The aftertaste of a moon consumed.

A calm beyond

 Soft as the massacre of Suns

By Evening’s Sabres slain

Emily Dickinson

Soon as dies the sunset glory,

Stars of heaven shine out above,

telling still the ancient story,

their Creators changeless love.

Jubilate! Jubilate! Jubilate! Amen!

Telling still the ancient story,

their Creators changeless love.

Samuel Longfellow

A Calm Beyond

When blows the gulf winds strong

Taking from the land the calm

We look beyond the tumult found

To the place of familiar ground

Where the river we know ever flows

Bringing peace to the Gulf of America 

And we in calm known again pray

Heal the torn land beyond ole Suwannee.

John Clare

Deliverance

 She hadn’t a clue 

Several years ago Melane, Jordon Stokes and I took a trip up to raft the river Deliverance was filmed on. All was going well, until we came to the water drop, which summarily proceeded to toss all from the raft but Jordon and I and the guide. When this photo came from the Outdoor Center, Jordon and I to this day laugh at Melanies bliss of not having a clue the epic struggle behind her. Moments later she was underwater and I was pulling her up from the swirl. To this day she insists we let her almost drown. She was not at all thankful for her “deliverance”.