The day was growing long, the destination far, there really was little time for lingering, yet there in park I was, gazing long into the old place. The wisteria seemed in the same state I was, searching for signs of a way of life gone, moved on. A desperate sort of search, before his own kind totally consumed.
John Clare Stokes
Seems if you survived beyond eleven
Ole death and his two helpers wouldn’t
come around again til around the fourth
score and one
that is until a few years after sixty two
when ole death recruited an army of helpers.
The trinity in the cemetery
Price Creek Cemetery
Why some folks
they smoke
Some they brush
On the
Down stroke
Some they just
Sit there like a
Pig in a poke
No joke
Watch that box
All day
Who you say?
Why some’s my
own kinfolk
Yesterday while looking down making camera adjustments, I looked up just in time to see a jet without a contrail pass through the waxing moon. Veronica commented, you’ll get another. But Ed knew well as I do, more often than not, you won’t. As the moon lowered, it also lowered below the 30k flight paths. It was then or never.
Yes, several more passed, but none through.
Moral of moment: set camera and watch. Even a few seconds distraction can be too long.
John Clare Stokes
One thing for certain
When I’m gone
If anyone dares
Or cares
I’ve amassed a
Body of work
Of absolute worthless
Proportions
Of homeless at intersections
Of bikers on back roads
Of college co ed’s crossing
Of Skinny ones behind poles
Of white face cows conversing
Of even road kills
Nothing much was ever missed
The ever observing lens
Taking it all in
A streaming daily account
Of our lives passing through.
The hydrangeas and the pioneers
Price Creek Cemetery
Griff and Bell
I could return time and again to the Williston area. Many would say it void of beauty. Perhaps I am biased by my living there, my parents being buried there. Beauty to me there abounds, from the mysterious grotto's, to the open expanses of the peanut fields, to the intimate oak lined lanes. I cannot image a place I would rather photograph.
john clare
To awaken the darkness
In the night
the poet had the temerity
to believe old sage tales
of incantations with
lilies waving chanting
Yeats and Keats with
A touch of Emily
he had faith
Eventually the
Stars would commence
to heed the words
Long dormant mute
To the day dwellers
Twinkle here twinkle there
Awaking the sons of
Heaven one by one
with but a swirling
Lily.
Robert Frost
A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what had made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady's fan.
For there there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.
May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.
Robert Frost
We sit indoors and talk of the cold outside,
And every gust that gathers strength and heaves
Is a threat to the house. But the house has long been tried.
We think of the tree. If it never again has leaves,
We'll know, we say, that this was the night it died.
It is very far north, we admit, to have brought the peach.
What comes over a man, is it soul or mind---
That to no limits and bounds he can stay confined?
You would say his ambition was to extend the reach
Clear to the Arctic of every living kind.
Why is his nature forever so hard to teach
That though there is no fixed line between wrong and right,
There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed?
There is nothing much we can do for the tree tonight,
But we can't help feeling more than a little betrayed
That the northwest wind should rise to such a height
Just when the cold went down so many below.
The tree has no leaves and may never have them again.
We must wait till some months hence in the spring to know.
But if it is destined never again to grow,
It can blame this limitless trait in the hearts of men.
A collaboration
One faith is bondage. Two
are free. In the trust
of old love, cultivation shows
a dark graceful wilderness
at its heart. Wild
in that wilderness, we roam
the distances of our faith,
safe beyond the bounds
of what we know. O love,
open. Show me
my country. Take me home.
Wendell Berry
And I roam within this
wilderness of home
the fields with the
heavens meeting
And in my longing
to be as one
two within this wild
journey come alongside
desperate to escape
leaving me with just
field and sky and the
exhilaration of in that moment
I was home.
John Clare Stokes
Johnclarestokes
It pains me beyond imaging
The lazed neglect of the old places
The o woe excuse we haven’t the money
Suppose soon it’ll be a falling
When in the stupor of fiddling
You could at least do a little trimming
Pick up the years of collected trash
It’s the least one could do
But it’s too much the chore
To you anyhow but an ole eye sore
No, only this meddling passerby laments
For he once stood a boy upon
Such a wonderful dog trot
And the boy never forgot
Never had the chance to
Carry the lovely hydrangeas
Into grandma to the table now gone.
