Stem Sails....on vessels frail...hoist the stems...journey never ends ...down uncharted dreams....
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Roll Tide
Roll tide
john clare
I've been within
The oceans waves
What seems a
Thousand eighteen
Twenty three days
I've prayed what
Seems times three
And three
That they may purge
Me to the shore
That there be some
Respite in some
Castle of sand
Yet just the time I
Breech to stand
The tide returns
And I roll
Time and three times
Three
Again.
Three rung rescue
Three rung rescue
John Clare Stokes
In a despair of cutting palmetto and prickling briar
The old hunters weary body began to tire
Pressing in upon his every side
The denizens hot upon his trail, he cried
When in the thick tangle, his end appearing
A tree of life with three rungs appeared
Down below as the snarling tusks circled snorting
High above the old hunter safely snoring.
New Name
What doth hinder Thee?
John Clare Stokes
Imagine the rickety wagon pulled by molly mule
returning from a sweltering rain starved field
when deep dips the rut road into shady cool
To the barn of home the two are steeled
when faintly a discernible voice whispers low
“Come to the water, what does hinder you?”
It was that Saturday evening Preacher was called
A new name was written in Suwannee by night fall.
A Prospect Primitive baptism
Suwannee River
I can bet money if Johnny shares this it will only be the photo not the prose.
Monday, November 18, 2024
Fragility
fragility
in a leaf can it be
that i see
the reality
of fragility
steps away from
a dark drop
what is to stop
me from the
deliberate slip
to end it
is all our walk
upon this path
sloped in favor
of the deep
to know the cold
the mystery that
lurks beneath
we shun the slip
with weakening grip
climb for higher ground
not down
down
down
cursing our
fragility...
Sunday, November 17, 2024
Three Pelicans
Three pelicans cross’d an ocean;
One with the memory of the charted way
Another the present strength in play
The third a future hope of port far away.
Crescent Beach
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Little Man
Little Man
John Clare Stokes
I’ve relayed the story before
how when a boy around four
I had a living plastic little man
He was real and I could understand
what he was saying to me
ruling over the Sopchoppy sand pile wonderfully
When time came to move to Monticello
I looked all about for the little fellow
But sadly we left and ever since
when I encounter one with resemblance to little man
I put him to my ear
Perchance saying you found me!
Carrying him about again as of old
So much to catch up on.
In the beginning
In Magoo beginning
Sometime around 1971 or so, for $25 Magoo purchased from his Williston high school science teacher a Yashica JP SLR with a 135mm lens and an external Sekonic light meter.
In 1973, with his graduation money, Magoo from Harmons photo in Gainesville purchased for around $125 a Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic with 50mm 1.8 Super Takamar lens with an internal needle meter. But before that, in the late sixties, I had a Polaroid Swinger, a magical little camera that an internal light would tell you when exposure was correct and sixty seconds later you could see your print.
Then there were the Nikons, the FM2, the FE, the F3, the digital D40 up to the D850, which will probably be my last camera.
Above Florida Sand
Above Florida Sand
John Clare Stokes
As my days upon the Florida sand grow long
I am hearing a once faint song growing strong
It wafts through the breezeway of old Johnson’s
Stirs the fire beneath the curing hams in the smokehouse
Fells the sweetgum leaves in Stewart’s yard
Shifts to low down the long lane again
As I stand gazing in the open field below
The mantle flutters to sand as I go.
Mark
Mark Philpots funeral was today. I originally planned to go but didn’t. We had many good times back when we were runners.
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