I often gauge the lives of those gone on by Helena Powers, still holding on strong at 106. Today mamma would only been 96. Gone at 89. But the roll is always being called up yonder and we wait our turn to depart.I am now 69 and I’ve came near departure in 2009 like Melanie the same year and again with year with a stroke. Once the runner swift is no longer immune from times hurdles. We creep to eternity.
There was speculation
Of who it could have been
The burying
In the night
There was talk of
Exhuming the unknown
To determine
Who it may have been
But in the end
A marker was placed
The unknown
Just wanted to die
Without a trace.
Poetry
He tried
It died
Bad sonnets
Weren't in vogue
Photography
He tried
Beautiful
Was the only
Reply
Just couldn't
Get beyond
Politics
He tried
So right in
A wrong world
No one voted
Not even he
Painting
He tried
The palette
Of colors
Didn't match anyone's
Decor
Then the pastor
Said he must
Decrease
That was simply
Easy
After all the
Trying
John Clare Stokes
Whatever came of our little lad
Whenever we made a fire outside
He was always there by our side
His pitch fork stabbing the pine straw
Watching the white smoke
Happily consuming it all.
This evening we burned a pine pile
On the hill
It was a good day with an
Autumn chill
But something was amiss
With the fire
It kept wafting low toward
The back porch door
Searching we were sure
For the little boy
As so I finally stuck his pitch fork
Next to mine
On the hill
And for the moment
Lured the sad smoke back.
Wallace Stevens
Mow the grass in the cemetery, darkies,
Study the symbols and the requiescats,
But leave a bed beneath the myrtles.
This skeleton had a daughter and that, a son.
In his time, this one had little to speak of,
The softest word went gurrituck in his skull.
For him the moon was always in Scandinavia
And his daughter was a foreign thing.
And that one was never a man of heart.
The making of his son was one more duty.
When the music of the boy fell like a fountain,
He praised Johann Sebastian, as he should.
The dark shadows of the funereal magnolias
Are full of the songs of Jamanda and Carlotta;
The son and the daughter, who come to the darkness,
He for her burning breast and she for his arms.
And these two never meet in the air so full of
Summer
And touch each other, even touching closely,
Without an escape in the lapses of their kisses.
Make a bed and leave the iris in it.
Once there was the time
When in our dairies written
A pain far beyond crying
Of secret lovers so smitten
I’ve read of the special recipes
Who the Sunday guests were
But ne’er the heart kept secret
The preachers wife framed perfectly
But I could read between her lines
For I too kept the heart hidden
Two souls of the poetic mind
The deepest pain of love n’er written
And now the words are sealed
What’s written as a language foreign
Only in eternity to be revealed
The deepest love right in the open
Revealed between the lines.
John Clare Stokes
Today the tree that moves me is atop Orange Hill Cemetery in Williston, Fla, place where so many of my loved ones and friends rest from their battles, their struggles, their quest to find the light amid their darkness.
The poem is dedicated to our common battle.
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 truce 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 on the Orange Hill quiet
Faint songs from old hymns
A remnant chants into the night
Pulls the weeds and remembers
Pearl and all of them
Awaiting.
Splendidly
John Clare Stokes
My father and his fellow preacher friend Josh
they loved to spend time in abandoned places
old homestead burn piles
digging about for buried treasure
They were both taken with the cobalt blue
depression glass
even the blue noxzema jars
and it lined the window sills of his old place
to give off an other worldly view of this
old world when looking through the cobalt.
When I happened upon the cobalt jars
in the shakers window
They too must have caught the desire to dig for
the cobalt blue.
I peered in and saw Josh and Luther Ray
in the Wakulla woods again.
John Clare Stokes
In the entering of the path back
One recalls the time of beginning
When extending it seemed such
The never ending journey.
This past December Roscoe and I traveled down to Williston, Raleigh to be exact, to get some seed cane from Jack Whitehurst. Jack along with his twin brother Bill and sister Harriet were the first people we met when we rolled in from Wilmore, Kentucky that June day in 1967. They had brought us watermelons to welcome us as the Preacher family of the First United Methodist Church. I told mamma that day, there are two men at the door. When I learned they were in my class of 1973, I kind of was concerned for my diminutive size. Their size later that year turned to my benefit when they opened wide gaps for the number 40 halfback to make long hauls on the JV football team.
Those were such great years with Pappy Whitehurst and my father being such friends, along with Elliot, Bill and Dan and their children.
I loaded the cane that day and looked forward to this November returning to Williston where Jack hoped to cook his own syrup, at least building a shed for the kettle and setting up the mill. I had last year finally set up my fathers Goldens Mill and had planned to squeeze the juice and take it down to add.
Saturday I was in Williston for the funeral of a family friend Tommy Brazeal and I sat by Jacks brother Bill and wife Cindie.
He said he’d tell Jack he saw me and would let me know where the cooking was taking place.
Today Bill messaged me to say Jack passed away that same Saturday around 6pm.
The cane is now all the more special than before, as is the bottle of syrup he and Charlene gave me.
In the sweet bye and bye
We shall meet by that beautiful gold cooking.
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.