john clare
In tin type time
we stroll again
Forever friends
Till our end
Remembered
Long beyond
The silvers spent
The plate
Broken
The emulsion
Washed
The lens
Capped
The black
Shroud draping
The bellows
Of the Wooden
Box that stored
The light
Revealing us
In our stroll
Through the
Moment in our
Time.
I’d build me a wall of Jasper and Sardiney, like no man ever did see, one them walls like China got, only taller, stronger, longer. One them aliens can see from out in space. Then I’d get me a bridge, one them golden gate kind, all shiny and fine. Then I’d put me out Democrat bait, and when them dim wits came crossing that pretty bridge for some of that free food and stuff, they’d fall right over my wall. That way we got both. A bridge and a wall. See y’all.
Is this to whom the angels sing
Shall we bow to this wonder
Or look for yet another....
Of pinewood vistas unfolding
Crescent moons humbly setting
Frost and freeze holding beauty
Down to the cry of one
Beholding eternity
Of these I sing.
Johnclarestokes
Quickly! the Marshall said
Flee from the burning
And in my haste
I reached for the shelf
Scanning the books to read
Lamenting
I could not decide
Which to save
As in the flames
Words unread ascended
Not one remembered
All greatly missed
Johnclarestokes
When freeze falls around
Impeding men in making
the daily round
When dreams struggle
to give rise
Hope held beneath
to drown
There is a stream
to which we long
Where forever goes
the never frozen flow.
Willie Ohl
Johnclarestokes
I came upon an elderly artist one day, her paints in her taboret. She said it's painful to be an artist, and not be able to use your hands. The little Indian boy, her son was a subject. The others, the husband, the mother, the father gone, the daughter all there upon the canvas. The late Artist Theron Gaulding of White Springs once said, he prefers to dwell in obscurity.
How I wish they dwelt in a gallery for all to see.
Johnclarestokes
Now if he was an angel I would have seen the wings
Heard the tune that heaven and nature sings
I would have placed upon the table the finest Rhodora
Set the golden silver in the proper order
But there was no table just a lift station pump
No song just the sound of sewage that stunk
Not the realm where angels should dwell
Wrapped in frumpy robes with a woody smell
And then as soon as my order came he was gone
The cars in line impatiently honked to move along
Later as I set the table of Lenox dinnerware
I wondered who would entertain angels unaware?
johnclarestokes
If you are reading this
You have made it out
Brooks wasn't so fortunate
Never getting beyond
Bagging groceries
There is on the road
To High Bridge in
Jessamine County
Kentucky
Near the John Curd
Revolutionary placard
By the first tree
Looking back toward
Wilmore under the field
Stone of the slave fence
A box
In that box you will
Find the codes
That unlocks the
Directions to the
Poetry written
By the sea
Long ago before I
Escaped from maximum sanity.
johnclarestokes
Does it not seem a
Futile thing to wake
The sleeping man?
Let him dream awhile
Yet
Lost in his boyhood
Stepping
Down to the dark
Riverbank
Lapping as a dog
where he drank
Swinging upon the
Scuppernong vines
Higher in the canopy
He climbs
Mamma called in vain
But jumpy never came
Bottle and boots
Found abandoned
Is the child now a man?
Between a splashing
and a slow drifting
Down the winding
Sopchoppy
We will never know.
down tube twelve speed shifters
Chrome Moly lugged frame
Chipped and dented from a crash
Rear ended on Paynes Prairie
Rear stays hammered straight
But when I top that rise by Biellings
And soar down the curving hill
I am atop a Pinarello Prince
Sixteen pound carbon wonder
Approaching sixty miles per hour
Far ahead of a struggling peloton
Somewhere over Watermelon Park way
And I thank my old friend Bob Jones
for giving me his old Schwinn this day....
