Journey with John Stokes

Sunday, December 1, 2024

No arrival time

Beside the journey

No journey is direct

as by the wayside

with trees we abide

arrival times neglect.

Again I was asked, what camera should I buy? And I say, any will do today. With Smart phones improving exponentially, cameras are becoming unnecessary unless you want to make prints larger than 4x6. In my day to day photography, I’d say 80% is with the iPhone6x.

I recently purchased a lens, a 200-500 beast of a telephoto that actually hurts to heft it to my eyes. Now what person in their right mind would lug that beast up and down the trail?

Well, me.

But then, I own a smart phone.

That don’t make me....smart.

Warm wolves

Warm Wolves

john clare

The well-mannered Wolves

Sat among the sheep today

They did not even snarl

Or salivate over the chops

They listened intensely

Seemed to hold on every

Word

But we had been through

this charade before

As upon the benediction

They blocked the door

And showed the shears

To fleece the wool

And the lambs were dumb

Falling again

For the well-mannered

Wolves

"Just Visiting".

Twenty six houses later

Homewood

john clare

Not a pine was standing

Not a grape vine

Scuppernong

Higgins or Fry

Not a Live Oak

Or Turkey Oak

No blueberry bushes

Or Sparkleberries

No Bradford pears

Good for canning

No golden delicious apples

No Holy Land Cedars from Lebanon

No Pecans from Lucilles tree

No Camilla from her wedding

bush gifts

No azaleas

They dozed it all

Just to make way

For the twenty-six stacked

Multi-same family units

Of Covington Circle

In Crawfordville on Aaron

road.

Houses of the whole wheat

Come and dine

The Master calleth

Come and dine

We be like

You got any quail?

Just manna

The Master says

Just manna

No thanks we say

We’ll try the diner

Down on Broadway

Did you hear?

The Baptists are serving burgers

and the Methodists

are making

meatloaf

The Presbyterians

are cooking

pork chops

and the

non denom’s

have the best coffee

the Nazarenes

it seems

Have doughnuts down

And the Church of God

great sirloins

don’t even have to join

What’s a seeker of food to do?

We are of the nature

To always want to be fed

Not to serve

Not to just dwell

If your only reason for

Fellowship is feeding

You may as well stay home

And eat from the frig

I think fellowship

Should not be coming

To take from the pastor

Your milk

But to simply dwell in

The Presence

With your fellow

Believers

In common worship

Whether or not the sermon

Feeds you

Is secondary

You should eat at home anyhow

In your own private

Prayer and devotion

In reading scripture

Song and psalm

Not come expecting

To be fed

Fed

Intervention Poetry

Intervening Poetry

by john clare

Can you take my life and make it a poem? he said,

lately everything has taken on new meaning

and I would rather you make sense of it instead

of a higher power coming down and intervening.

So I took a close look into his life and found

the reason why things were void of rhyme.

I took the quill and parchment to write it down,

trying not to be too vague or sublime.

It took several revisions before I was pleased

and presented it to him with nervous anticipation,

hoping his life now a poem would allow him to see

and appreciate the finer insights of inspiration.

It wasn't long before I received a call

and it was my friend all in a terrible confusion

that it wasn't what he expected at all

Where did you get the words you were using?

Such are the traps we enter when our friends

ask the poets to compose lines upon their lives

and the barbs stick and the bleeding begins

as if my pen was meant as a daggered knife.

So I took the eraser and began anew the lines

and wrote a simple nursery rhyme easy to

understand and certain not to offend this time,

but as a poet of lives I was through.

And on the wall framed for all to see

is the poem composed with mixed intention.

Each time it is read I cringe greatly

for you see, he really needed that intervention.

Bend Low

Many the time I’ve witnessed her

Bending low to reveal her sandy spine

I cast my eyes askance at her demure

The flood cloak left for another time.

Mesech

Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar! Psalm 120:5

Recently the fellowship experienced an upheaval, a shift in the leadership. What had been a dwelling in Zion, now seemed a Mesech. And so the harps were hung upon the willows and there was a longing for the Ivory Palaces. And so there is a striking out in the wilderness, in search. Little do we realize the futility, for the fire by night did not move, but we did.