Journey with John Stokes

Friday, December 6, 2024

Olustee Winner

2021 Olustee Festival Photo contest winner was John Stokes, center. Shannon Barker (left) and Dr. Sherri Carder (right) placed also.

Thank you to everyone who entered! 🤗

My true love gave to me

Three grackles grackling

“I have not always chosen the safest path. I've made my mistakes, plenty of them. I sometimes jump too soon and fail to appreciate the consequences. But I've learned something important along the way: I've learned to heed the call of my heart. I've learned that the safest path is not always the best path and I've learned that the voice of fear is not always to be trusted.” (Steve Goodier) ______

Before the Journey long

Orlando Seaboard Terminal

Milk and wine

With sunshine

Makes for a

late autumn

Inspiration

Date Night

I try not post syrupy, lubby dubby stuff. I’ve unfollowed several lubby dubby couples over the years infatuated with their trophy wife or masculine male. I try to be sensitive to those who do not have lubby dubby relationships and how it also makes them go like me, yuk, find a private room you two. Oh, by the way, pay no attention to those two Nikons in love.

Then cloudier become

Then Cloudier Become

Emily Dickinson

1830-1886

I've seen a dying eye

Run round and round a room

In search of something, as it seemed

Then cloudier become;

And then, obscure with fog,

And then be soldered down;

Without disclosing what it be,

'T were blessed to have seen.

Grandmas leg

Grandma’s leg

John Clare Stokes

I don’t know why mamma would do it

But she would send me to spend the night

at Mrs Porters by the river

And she had an older son named Tommy

and he’d like to scare me

especially by showing me grandma’s wooden

leg in the corner closet

and he’d tell me how grandma would come

in the late night in search of

her wooden leg

And the cold wind would moan through the

Cracks in the floor

And the closet door would creak

And grandma would look at me and

With a finger at her mouth tell me

Shhhhiiishhh now.

Don’t tell Tommy.

Thursday, December 5, 2024

Bellville

Bellville Bridge over the Withlacoochee River.

It is late as you are about to enter Florida heading South on I-75 from Lowndes County. The concrete clunk, clunk, clunk of Georgia is hypnotic, looming ahead an exit. The only sign you see announcing this unincorporated town, the last exit before Florida. Exit 401, Lake Park Bellville Road. You tell your slumbering companion, lets get off this infernal concrete and travel down to have a look. You are about to enter the Twilight Zone.