Has God forgotten

 Day into day

Night into night

We wait for a sign

Perhaps today the sojourn

Perhaps today the arrival

A word from afar

A hope quite close

Are all the paths destroyed

Do all the watchmen sleep

Cold grows the land

Quiet goes the man

Threshold of Tirzah

 

Friday

I sit and drink coffee and procrastinate the  day. The washer and dryer need to be replaced and i groan. 

Branch Out

 Branch out

John Clare Stokes 

Become a branch manager

Or a Branch Davidian

Paddle with a Bending Branch 

Drink at the Long Branch

Pick a branch and let your mamma whip you

Withdraw all your money from the branch bank

Become a poet warrior and turn your branch

into a lance

Be brave and go out on a branch 

But before you do, be sure you’re on 

the branch of David.

Branches 

Johnson place 

Wellborn

Father and son

 A father and a son...upon Watertown Lake...it takes me back...when i took my sons...and grandson...here.

Rainbow stone

 Rainbow stone

I got to comparing the rainbow

To the millstone

How with one the promise

Comes

And with another

We sharpen swords

And I dreamed of being

Pinned to my chair

By a dagger thrown

Sharpened upon a 

Rainbow stone.

Idocy

 Idiocy

I do these things periodically 

Like go boot less through

The woods

Leave offerings along the way

Say things that make 

Sensibly sensitive ears burn

Get accused of being cruel

And certainly not funny

It's great 

This idiocy and 

Greater yet

Uncovering 

Idiocy

Crow in mimosa

 Crow in Mimosa

They were Poe's crows

It was Mondrian's mimosa 

All the same I composed 

They flew

and the moment

Was over.

When life comes

 For weeks Melanie was in an induced coma while the oscillator beat on her lungs. The decision was made to stop the oscillation and bring her out of the coma. We weren’t sure if she would come back. You looked into her eyes and they were blank. Imagine when recognition came back. The song Amazing Love, My chains fell off was playing. Such a mystery when life returned.

Camellia

Camellia 

By John Clare 

For no discernible reason I want to swirl

And in a great effort to

maintain control

I stand stoic before this

Dancing girl

And still waltz away within my soul. 

Days of thespians past

 Days of Thespians Past

john clare stokes

Long past the forgotten lines

Well beyond the curtain call

From the bed and down the hall

To sit and mutter from Macbeth

Is this the end of Thespians

In some woodland sparse

Before the fireless hearth

From nostrils smoke leaking

Mute the cheers ringing flee

Mock the tongue tied stammer

Yet do I fear thy nature

Is this a dagger I see before me?

Nought's had, all's spent

Where our desire is got without content;

Tis safer to be that which we destroy

Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

37 years

 The way we were

The winter of eighty eight on this day

Kim Eatman-Smith maid of honor, Melanie’s sister

Melanie

Rev Luther Ray Stokes, minister, my father

Magoo, Rooster at the time

John “Hambone” Wilson, best man

Photo by Bob Jones

Whitehurst Memorial Chapel

Williston