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 confines
I shall not help the blind again see
They will just have to grope darkly.
Outer Limits
Through no fault of my own doing
Yet then from all the fault of my doing
The crows have deemed me outer limits
No matter the signals of peace sent
Crows know faces and it’s my thought
one was watching the day the rooster died
and he flew to tell the murder of the deed
A fate awaiting them should they near
I feign to imagine what other deeds they’ve seen
Telling the crow world of one so craven
Perhaps I shall wear a mask when in the yard
Attract them again in some future new generation
But they pass on the story to the offspring
The cock crows thrice and I am cowering.
The well-prepared long distant voyager...while this photograph was taken on Low Lake Road in the early eighties....it could have been taken thirty years later...for little changed...the same bike...the same shorts, shoes and jersey,huret mileage counter on the front wheel, mirror, pockets full of tools and snacks...the only piece of equipment updated was the helmet....and it too was dated….Roger Sessler was an icon to me and so many....never changing...always there....faithful....a friend.
Between two fires
John Clare Stokes
We once were among those
Who spent their autumn days
between two fires
Of Alfred and his tall tales
the Fugates and Smiths with
the old upright in between
in harmony we would sing
as the hounds would join in
for that evening
all would chase the venison.
Moon ache
John Clare Stokes
How many years shall it take
to heal the everlasting moon ache
Years the waxing and waning arches
over the prayers pleas and petitions
Silently in a nonchalant cold aloof way
the moon sets yet the ache goes not away.
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 past seventy and rapidly keeping their pace....
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!
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.
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
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
Little Pan
To us he will always be
Our Little Pan
He will grow into a man
Put aside flying with
Tinkerbell
In a far off land dwell
But we will never
Cease to tell
Of the magical dust
Little Pan once
Sprinkled over us.
Swing Lo, Swing Sopchoppy
My brother Lewis years ago swinging into the Sopchoppy
River across from our parsonage in Sopchoppy. Lewis wasn't born until we moved from Sopchoppy to Monticello in November of 1963. My sister Paula and I both learned to swim here. It was quite an accomplishment we thought to be able to swim to the dock across the black waters. My father rarely swam, the only time I recall him in water was at Blue Springs and even then he wore long pants in the water. My mother likewise was not a swimmer, only once I recall her getting in the Sopchoppy with me in her black one piece and black inner tube. We were probably the only kids not allowed to swim on Sunday when all the town seemed to gather in front of the house. Now the swimming hole is grown over and totally unseen from the road. What then seemed a large river to a child, is to an adult a mere creek.
Some free poetry
Don't make life more difficult than it is,
Like don't shake the bottle,
It won't fizz.
Be kind to ma, who can't hear or see,
She put up with you,
When you were ugly and smelly.
Appreciate your pastor, give him a Mac,
And when he's attacked,
How bout 'gettin his back!'
And settle down,marry her and quit the beer,
And quit talking deer,deer,deer!
Tell the bride she's mighty pretty,
Not too fat, not too skinny(in all sincerity)
And you will live a long life and not at a young age croak,
And by the way,
Slow down and only pass when them yellow lines are broke.
When Tuesday looks gloomy
I return to Monday
And the memory
Of leaving the bike
To watch a bee....
When you think
Life stinks
And you’re in a
Class four sink
Think how great
You did think
To have your
Paddle and kayak
For just such times
In the brink...
Would the pieces fit
The modular man
Eyes from a Keller
Ears from a deaf fellow
Tongue from poison asp
Nose of Jimmy Durante
Mouth of Navy sailor
Brain of one insane
The Rollei
When one wants to see anew
Take something vintage
And through it view
A vision intended
Big Shoals
It’s a nice hike
Best when waters low
For if you go
Along the Florida Trail
And you don’t want to
Walk an extra mile
Up the hill
To the beam bridge
You can hop across
Robinson branch
That is
If the waters low
Or, just get wet
Either way
It will do you good
And btw
When you get to the
Shoals
Be sure to sign my card
In the tree notch
That way
Next time I come
I’ll know you’ve
Been there too.
Mid Term
John Clare Stokes
Come ye Triumphant sons
Before our homeland burns
The blue invader comes
For kingdom come we yearn.
Til the day comes
Vote red for our sons sons.
Cotton Field
Providence
If I but dip
We all have in our lives the maladies that are in such need of that dip within the angelic pools of stirring waters. October on is to me the best time to dip ones maladies in the Itchetucknee.
They say the sun is round
Down at Watertown
I went down
To see if it was to be found
Just as they said it would be.
The finest fog
It was the finest fog
A perfect blend
Of cane syrup cooking
Smoke house hams
Curing
Autumn leaves burning
I've yet to dwell in
A finer fog
Through the cypress
It was a rapid walk at six
To reach the edge of the cypress
By the time I arrived
The elusive light
Was just beyond my reach.
Comes the opening
Do you not sense at times
in your mortal flesh
a distant quickening
that you were not one
created for long slumbering
that there is coming
an opening
A way into the
ancient of days?
The summer like day
Then comes the summer-like day,
Bids the old man rejoice!
His joy! his last! Oh, the man gray
Loveth that ever-soft voice,
Gentle and low.
Auden
In dream
by John Clare Stokes
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 Rout
John Clare Stokes
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.
Lone Oak of Lona
Many trees grow by stealth, ignored until they grow to intrude upon power lines or property lines or become belligerent, dropping limbs on roofs or leaves in pools. Happy the tree planted to grow to maturity for generations, free to drop limbs and leaves with abandon.
When I was a boy growing up in Sopchoppy, I would go out in the Apalachicola in Grimes Bay with Mr George Strickland shown here and his son Robert, one year older than me, to check his hives for bear. I still recall that chilling feeling of coming up on torn up supers. Ole Slewfoot struck again.
Oh Kentucky, when I am lonely and the autumn breezes chill me, in your bluegrass hills I long to be, place of boyhood spills and college thrills, where ever I have roamed, from Florida's sands to West Virginia's mines, always it seems I am drawn, to the Kentucky I once called home.
Deer Boy
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 boy with
Spots beneath the palmetto.
With Me
John Clare Stokes
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.
Klein Time
John Clare Stokes
Today I heard a knocking
It was at the degree
Of sixty
I knew he'd be coming
Burning day light, you see.
Upon the red Klein
Huret counter set to zero
A century I expect this time
Toward Moniac we will go.
Resting at the East Tower
Huret cyclometer at twenty five
Over the drop bars i cower
Seventy-five more I cry!
Sand and pines
Sand and pines
Will the miles ever end
Red Klein way ahead
Slow squares I spin.
Parched in a mirage
Moniac and the end
There sits ole Rog
Offering me a fig newton.
To Roger Kosch Sessler
March 22, 1932
October 22, 2011
October wind
We know the winds of March and
how the winter they part
ushering summer upon us
But the winds of October foreign
with winter soon returning.
In this world of body piercing and full frontal tattoos, I come bearing the scars of my own making, the result of pulling a coffee pot of boiling water on me, as a child of two. I did not wear my scars proudly as a child. I went to great lengths to conceal them, making great excuses for wearing a tee swimming. What angst to be chosen on the skins team. The kids in their comments were brutal. And so now that I am old, I have finally learned, no one cares for these scars but me. Today I shaved all facial hair. Not even the wife noticed. What a waste of angst all those years.
