Journey with John Stokes

Sunday, December 29, 2024

You’ll shoot the stars out

You'll shoot the stars out

Would when high in the woods

Looking down from the stand

In hopes of deer or bear to fall

A grand light would descend

And as the deer and bear passed

You'd look up to hear a voice

And you wouldn't think twice

But immediately take up photography

You didn't see that coming

And you'd just shoot the stars out.

Sorry

Resume your hunting...

Crossing the mists

Crossing the mist

Johnclarestokes

Quietly as the breathing tide drew from shore

Til but a faint trickle then a still pool

Into the distance mists another drew

The muted life with the mists in a swirl

Cold grew the once warm life on earth

Warmer grew the rising glow beyond

Til into eternal arms time was flung

To envelope the years of tearful mirth

Into the mists we vainly peered

Where goes our love held so dear?

How travels this spirit into the drear?

What mists can dry such tears?

Then in a gentle lifting of the mist

The mystery of the word in flesh

By faith grace the spirit does caress

In joy our downtrodden spirits lift.

We fear not the gathering gloom

It’s given that our years dwell in dim

Preparing us for the eternal realm

Our darkness into the light consume.

The river of dreams

Johnclarestokes

There is this river of which the man dreams

That someday he will paddle in the entirety

Knowing every bend of her native beauty

Just two in the canoe of long journey

The Old Town is outfitted and trimmed

Bending branch wood paddles for the two

Lean to tent and supplies generously secured

Nothing spared for the journey of the two

But this river of which he dreams doesn’t exist

The canoe but a dry stored upside down hull

Paddles dry rot from many years out of water

But constant in his dream the thought persists.

It’s what every old waterman longs for

That journey with the elusive love he lost

To return to the rivers source at any cost

There to dwell upon her shore for ever more.

Oceans of contemplations

Oceans of constellations

I do not cast for the usual fare when there

I’m quite the opposite Isaac Walton

When it comes to the art of ichthyology talking

I cannot distinguish crappie from brim

No, my creel consists of varying contemplations

Dreams on lines sinking into murky deep

Hopes tangled in the branches determined to keep

Joy bobbing in the sparkling undulations

And more times than not I reach my limit

The frustrated fishers feign pity my way

Some think me insane with no catch of the day

Oh, if only they could taste baked contemplation.

Friday, December 27, 2024

May 20, I drove that afternoon to Buster Prices viewing, at Sherill-Guerry. Buster is my friend Ray Carpenter father in law. While there I was slurring my words and I. drove home. The next morning Melanie and I drove to Shands to check it out. They did a MRI but found nothing and sent me home. The next morning I had difficulty getting out of bed and thought it vertigo. We went back to Shands and repeated the MRI and still found nothing. I came home. I was no better so we returned a third time and did the MRI and they found a small blockage in the arteries in back of my head. I stayed all night in the ER hall waiting for a bed.

From there I was admitted til I went to Shands Rehab.

One rule

Oceans know

Johnclarestokes

For they have been ordered

These be your bounds

And we are with one order found

Eat not of this one tree

And we can’t obey

Oh to be as the mighty ocean.

The year of the walker

Who would have thought 2024 would be the end of life as i knew it? Was the stroke bought on by not taking my statin pills, thinking they bought on early dementia? So what is worse, forgetting or having to teach myself to walk, to use my right hand?

By all count, it could have been massive and left me a hardship on family to maintain me. Now, it’s just annoying, but doable.

It saddens me to have to stop work driving. Seeing friends daily.