Green whites

 Granny, why are  my clothes green?

Granny said, child, did you throw them in the washing machine?

I said, just these green whites.

Granny, said, guess you just

Washed supper tonight.

Beyond Riverside

 beyond riverside

we walked beyond riverside

slipping past those who died

Forms  in the night lingering

Hovering above the cicadas

chirping in unison singing seee

seee see Beulah land seeee

beyond riverside above the

entrance arch a gathering

march oh seee seeee seee

the band of cicadas coming

for Mary oh seee seee see.

Real

 REAL.

Emily Dickinson

I like a look of agony,

   Because I know it's true;

Men do not sham convulsion,

   Nor simulate a throe.

The eyes glaze once, and 

that is death.

   Impossible to feign

The beads upon the forehead

   By homely anguish strung.

Gar Glare

Photo by John Stokes

Alligator Lake

I never knew

 I never knew

john clare 

Upon the eating

Of the pork chop

Special

Grilled 

Not as fattening 

He asked me

Who this 

John Clare

Fellow was

I said 

He was a poet

He lived in the 1700's

I never knew him

Upon the take out tea

Sweet

Fattening

I told him

It was me

I wrote the poetry 

He looked at me

Doubting

I never knew.

Upon the driving home

I told my wife

Do I not only speak 

In rhyme

All the time

And he never knew

And she said

I wouldn't know.

And the tea was sweet

And fattening 

This we knew.

Above the mosquito

Above the Mosquito

by john clare

There is a mountain ridge two

thousand feet above home

Too cold for the Mosquito's and

the malaria they bring

We should be able to talk clearer on

the hand phone

And build a new landing strip for the

valiant aviation wing.

It is there we shall move and build

again

Then continue the translation of the

Wano word

To free them from the superstitions 

of sin.

And raise tribal missionaries from

whose lips the gospel is heard.

Come and join the Wilds in bringing

life to those below

Pouring their all from the heights

to the Wano people

We must pray and give so they can know

Christ dwells in the valley seven thousand

feet among the mosquito. 

Down range

 By the time

John Stokes

By the time Orion

Had lifted into orbit

Behind the fog

We were three miles

Down range east

Traveling at the speed

Of forty-five

Heading for our 

Destination

Experimental mission

To see if

Man can sustain on

Hardee's biscuits.

Watertown Cormorants

John Stokes

Creation of color

 The creation of color

Deep within the without

Form or void

A voice heard calling 

Come forth

A creation of my own making in PicArts and PSExpress on the iPhone.

Written in Tannic

 Written in tannic

Times we’d come to the slow ebbing Suwannee 

and in the foam from shoals read the writing

of our lives fleeting and what was to be

thankful to Him the source of our being.

As an egret lifts

 As an egret lifts

Time was running thin as it was near time to leave. The deep fog was being burnt off in pieces as sporadic light entered. Viewing the sequence on the screen of the camera, it looked promising.

It wasn’t time to go, but is it ever? 

D850 with 200-500.

A Williston girl

 A Williston girl

We moved to Williston in 1967 to the Methodist parsonage on Noble Avenue by the stately yellow brick church my father pastored for ten years. Across the street where Hardee’s is today was the two story Wilson home with a trailer park. Valerie Jones Blackburn lived in the little trailer by the road beside the service station with her tame mockingbird. She had a daughter Marguerite Davis and son Harlan. Her husband Henry died in 1958. I often visited her, for she was a painter and she would always tell me, I am praying you marry a Williston girl.

I would dismiss it for I’d run through my list of old girlfriends and most were hitched or getting hitched. We moved from Williston in 1977 to Lake City and Valerie died on April 3rd, 1978 at age 77. Her prayer I forgot. In 1986 my niece Jessica was in Shand’s hospital and her nurse was a girl from Williston my sister insisted I meet.

The day arrived and Melanie entered to check on Jessica and we met. Though I mustered courage to later ask her to go with me to fanfare and fireworks, she turned me down since she was dating a doctor. I thought, that was that.

But then, a full year later, I got this letter from Williston. It was Melanie wanting me to show her how to use her “cannon” she recently purchased. She had remembered the zoo pictures I took and taped on Jessica’s bedside wall. She had broken up with the doctor too.

I had just returned from finding a note in the bottle at St Marks wishing who found this the same happiness Bob and Carolyn White had found. The timing was beyond coincidence. 

As I drove to Williston the following Saturday, I thought of Valerie and her prayer. 

That prayer was answered January  8, 1988 at Whitehurst Memorial Chapel, just a Mockingbird call from Mrs Blackburn’s trailer.

Swings and wings

 Swings and wings

It was but a fleeting scene

Quickly captured in the passing

A father making a rope swing

For a little boy sprouting wings...

We all fall down

 We all fall down

John Clare Stokes

Ashes ashes we go round

Merry the circling spin

Joyful the lads sound

Pockets full of posey’s

Oh how the lasses grin

The blush of cheeks rosy

Breathless they all exclaim

Let it never end

Swift this ageless game

Youthful exuberance gone

Spent the wheezing bend

Slowing the frail hobble on

When to still silence all around 

Well done my old friends

Ashes ashes we all fall down