A dear stand
As you make your way
To temples you
Call holy
For it jives with
Your perceived way
Got all the
Trappings
Down pat
You may as well
Be worshipping
The Holy one
From a deer stand
What part of
He ain't in your pew
Don't you
Understand?
Upon passing by the Mormon Tabernacle
Now that verdict has come
In the wake of the prosecution
There are some
I miss slightly
Who took flight
From me
When it was learned
I was pro self defense
With just a turn of glass
Gone the glare
Gone the flare
What was obscured
Becomes clear
Vivid in hue
A nation not blue
But going solid red.
There is a special tree in Sopchoppy
Where if you peer through intently
Before long the bricks will fade
And you can smell the fresh batch of
Bread pudding just made.
John Clare Stokes
November mornings I hear the bob white
whistling in the kitchen and know
that soon the cane syrup
will be hopping by the noon light,
the amber sweetness compared to Berts
down in the woods of Mt Beasor,
out from Sopchoppy,
with Mrs Cora teaching Clara the art of
fluffy biscuits for the Methodist preacher,
with a little help from Mary Rudd above,
while little Jumpy climbs high the pummy
pile to claim king of the mountain,
only to be cast down by Robert his best friend
to muster the strength to climb again,
as over the green stamp plates grace is said,
the syrup poured reverently over the hot biscuit,
and later in the night while awake in his bed,
the little boy quietly whistles for bob white,
knowing he will soon answer in the cold
starry November Wakulla night.
Long beyond the tears of the loved ones
Long beyond the memory of those gone
Long beyond the breve of the song
They will gather to circle around
They will assure the eyes cast down
They will never here be found
They will scatter as leaves upon ground.
john clare
In the birthing stall
An annunciation
Born! Born!
The child of promise
Comes
To proclaim
To place within
The thorn
The whispering song
Not my home
Not my home!
Stem Sails....on vessels frail...hoist the stems...journey never ends ...down uncharted dreams....
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
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.
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.
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...
