Cheap lens?

 Cheap to you perhaps. Expensive to me. But when you buy 13,000 lenses and cameras at the drop of a hat, i suppose it is cheap.  Must be nice Dick.

S

Monochrome

 

Old friend

 My Long time friend Rick Bringger came and took me to lunch at the Skillet, formerly the Farmhouse. Saw Mrs. Freeman and Peggy from Lantern Park Days. Rick still bikes with Ben Chancey. 

First things first

 When we moved to Sopchoppy in 1955, i was 6months old. My father’s first project was to replace the stately wooden church. I am sure there was controversy but in the end the new church prevailed. The church is no longer a Methodist Church and the parsonage next door has been torn down. I image the only person living is Sam Dunlap pictured with the ladies taken when the church was first built. 

In the Pew

 Chosen pew

Johnclarestokes 

I too 

grew between the pew

Hard wood, cushioned, splintered, soft

I knew them all

It was the start

Of a life in art

The bulletin becoming

My first canvas 

I love the pew

The many sermon I sat 

Through

Those beside,behind, upon

Under

Those who nudged me

They who held me

Knelt beside me

I shall see them all

When around the 

Fathers pew we are

One day called.

Dolly’s painting

 People often ask for permission to paint my photographs, i don’t mind. Life's too short to be a prick.

The morning moon

The morning moon

This morning of the third I walked a spell

trying to keep pace with the setting moon

There were many with us along the route

not in forms you would especially recognize

but distinct in the way the mist parted

Read to me again

 Read to me again

John Clare Stokes

What possible good was I

The aged poet called to her side

One of her end of days requests

Made no doubt in mad duress

What would she reveal

Would she tell of love in secrecy

Of trips to the beach by darkness

When all the world was sleeping

The setting moon, the rising sun

It knew us

A few starfish too

But that was about all

Holding the frail, withered hand

Warmth as of old still in the veins

The writing once so eloquent 

The touch so tender

Parting the old, old friend

To my ear she began whispering

The dying words of a lover

Read to me again

Our poem of the ocean.

Let us labor

Let us labor

Johnclarestokes 

I think of those now gone on

Some to eternal worlds

Others yet remaining here 

And I’m ever grateful for their labors

In the kingdom not of calloused hands

Men as ZT Johnson of Asbury 

Who helped usher me into the kingdom

A father, Luther Ray, who welcomed me

At the altar of repentance 

There were many following

Razziel at Florida Southern my brother

Mentoring me so lovingly

A long chain of laborers 

From Russell and a community praying

Melanie back to us

To Aaron singing softly to a dying mother

Touching beyond knowing this

Heart prone to hardening

So grateful for the workers in the vineyard 

So looking forward to drinking in

The fruits of their labors one day.

ZT Johnson, President of Asbury College, Rev Lawrence George with Rev Luther Ray Stokes and Bert Roddenberry and his wife Cora at his farm in Sopchoppy, Florida.

To the bend

 To the bend

Johnclarestokes 

Old Town Chipewan trimmed

Paddles poised in remember 

For tonight from shiver to timber

We stroke upstream to forgetting 

From Cone pylons to Limp bend mystery

Our journey quietly wends

Suwannee time suspends

Sand bars all open

Full moon all enveloping 

Tupelo tonic mixes with the tannic

A doe dips low for a taste

Barred owls who do you think

Pileated's pine bark rain falls

Coyotes call on the prowl

Wet wood hisses and growls

Soon by firefly light we sleep

To mares of critters creeping 

By dawns dew prints revealing

Pungent fresh the nocturnal fumes

Stoke the embers to live

Coax it to warmth give 

All is misty in the limp bend

By first light the Suwannee

Amnesia begins.

Vanishing point 3

 Roll Up

Perspective suddenly 

Dawned upon me

In the most unlikely

Place of privacy

Scrawled on the marbled

 wall

My

vanishing 

Point

Slip away

What things 

Once cling to

Slip away

What things

Once held to

Fade away

What things

Once loved too

Go away

What things 

Once drawn to

Stay

He extends the

leprous hand

wrapped in the

oozing gauze

once white 

and I extend 

the naked hand

not knowing 

by the morning

the fingers

will begin their

falling

the friendship

worth more

than the loss.

Call of the cadence

 Call of the cadence

Johnclarestokes 

Come Saturday September mornings 

When the land begins the autumn cool

The goldenrod on roadsides is seen growing

Persimmon on the tree to sweet turning

Faintly within there is this calling

To journey far into the Gum Swamp pines

Past the Sanderson fork beyond the ocean Pond

On past the Taylor grocery store break

Far, far over the St Mary’s river into Moniac

Where the Nehi streams flow amber

You can reach right up and pluck

A moon pie from the South Georgia sky

Sit and stare lovingly into her snaggletooth eyes

Hear her say, “where you been all my days?”

And you reply, “burning daylight

Burning daylight, my darling.

Now here in Moniac I can die.”