Pine Sunday

Pine Sunday

john clare stokes

Word got out

The man upon 

The donkey would

Be passing through 

We took the pines

And strawed the way

We thought he'd take

But LO he never came

We later learned 

It was further south

Down by the palms. 

The pull

 The inexplicable pull

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.

Trinity at cemetery

 Eleven 

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

Some folks

 Stokes 

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

Another time

 Another time

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.

Body of work

 Body of work 

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

 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.

Night lily

 Night Lily

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.

Unharvested

 UNHARVESTED

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.

There are roughly zones

 THERE ARE ROUGHLY ZONES

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.

What’s that?

 Whats That?  by john clare     I have a little grandson, he is the only one. Now we have this bond, of one another quite fond. From the very start, he stole my stoney heart. I would take him all about, pointing everything out. Now he says, What's that? What's that?, they wonder where he got that? We think they do not know, the love we show. Just last night, such a heart rending sight. As he was taken up to go, his tears began to flow. And reaching for old me, he cried most desperately! Who but him cries for me? Not judging I'm past seventy? Caring less I'm growing old, soon gone, just simply wanting me to hold, pointing out from where we sat, What's that? What's that?

A homecoming

 A Homecoming

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