Journey with John Stokes

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Rocky March 5, 2016

By first light over the back fence

I dug the grave

Would he fit I thought

And so I enlarged it to

The dream I had of

Throwing dirt overhead

From the deep pit

Hoping to strike water

Or oil

But it was not to be

Digging never amounts

To anything but

Sorry poverty.

Song

I tell my love in rhyme

In a sentence that must end,

A measurable dividend,

To hold her time against time.

I praise her honest eyes

That keep their beauty clear.

I have nothing to fear

From her, though the world lies,

If I don’t lie. Though the hill

Of winter rise, a silent ark,

Our covenant with the dark,

We will speak on until

The flowers fall, and the birds

With their bright songs depart.

Then we will go without art,

Without measure, or words.

Wendell Berry

He rarely stayed up past nine, usually by eight he would retire to the room with the A/C window loudly humming. In the front room we would be up watching TV, where I would move from the vinyl couch to his more comfortable recliner, usually changing the channel from CNN he always watched. In the kitchen mom would be washing dishes in the single cold water faucet sink or baking a blueberry pie from what we had picked earlier in the day. A pot of hot water was always simmering for the dishes on the back burner or a bath in the four leg tub. Before daylight he would be awake in the kitchen, lighting the gas stove to take the chill off with a fat lightered stick, getting ready to pour the pancakes on the stoves built in griddle, sprinkled with blueberries naturally.