Off they go

 Wild blue yonder

john clare

Off they go

Into the wild

Blue yonder

Out of our

Lives to live

Alone in their

Self love

No room for anyone

And so off they go

Into the wild blue

Yonder

The sleeping little 

One waking and

Calling for a Pappa

He will soon stop

Calling for

As off they take him

Into that wild blue

Yonder

Leaving us grounded

Unable to reach them

In that wild blue

Yonder

Leaving us to

Wonder

How is life alone

Way beyond that

Wild blue yonder

And how will we

Live without that

Little one

In this terrible land

Down under that

Wild blue

Yonder.

Falling

 Falling

Twice in my evening mares you were falling. The first fall was by mistake and tragic.

The second fall was a deliberate swan dive

Into my arms

Fish prayer

 If I should rot

Before I dry

I pray the fly

Is swat

The long path

 Scenes of dreams

They wanted

In my seeing

It was all one scene

Playing out

Around me

In the corners

Dark vignettes 

Reminding

Comes the sleeping

The path to

The long

Long

Dreaming.

In the mourning

 In the mourning

It's what we old artists do

Before the varnish has even set

Mourn the cracking of the paint

Lament the mold gathering

To color green everything

Dwelling long upon the leaving

Before even finishing the greeting

It's this insipid seeing past

Knowing these works won't last.

Where is John?

 The community socials

Were awkward and 

Uncomfortable for father

He was invariably asked

And what ever became

Of the little one called

John?

And they knew

They just liked to cruelly 

Provoke him

For their sons were

Doctors and lawyers

And politicians

With splendid homes

Up long winding roads

Manicured and nourished

By the finest manure.

Mt Tabor

 Mt Tabor Methodist. Columbia Co, Florida. Burned down by an arsonist around Dec 1986. Shot with Yashica Mat 124 with Plus X and developed in D76.

Discombobulated

 Discombobulated 

John Clare Stokes

When the bottle tree, the quail trellis, the rope swing, the syrup shed, the swing were at Pilgrim's Rest farm in Crawfordville, there was an order about them, a place, they fit. In the selling of the home place in 2000 and the year long moving so many years arranging, the tree and trellis and other items from a life were hastily set out without the careful thought. Williston never seemed to fit. The spacing was off. It wasn't the same. With the selling of the Williston farm in 2008 and the subsequent moving again, the accumulation of a life was scattered to my home, my sisters, my brothers, further diluting the place they held. The tools in the shed in disarray, the syrup mill stored, things rusting and rotting away. No place else to go. They seemed to lament the leaving Pilgrim Rest. It never should of happened. But it did. Slowly I’ve tried to reconstruct the mill and kettle, the bell, the many amaryllis scattered about, the split rails. With my passing I fear it all shall fall in strangers hands, with no clue as to their origin.

Where is your work?

move on lana dot org

And where are your works?

She says.

Right here, I say.

She never looks.

By their looks

By my works 

You shall know them.

She moves on.

It was at times exasperation magnified when I once volunteered at the Gallery where I once displayed. One good thing, when the occasional customer would stroll through, you really got to know the smoke up from the stoked up. This lady was blowing smoke. She never even stopped to look at my work right before her. 

Immogene

 Kindred one

The photographs picked up with expectation

On my way to find the make up aisle

There you were in the card section 

As we paused to catch up and smile

You spoke of the gathering around the keys

And I of lost opportunities 

One a poet musically

One a poet of melancholy 

Kindred ones

Humming in harmony

Mary way

 The Mary Way

Have you found the Mary way

of just sitting away the day

by some still water lake

beside some slow moving stream

beneath one sure rising moon

above a pool of circling minnow

in a meadow awaiting the Swallowtail 

Find it Martha

What f stop

 The novice inquired of the master. "Tell me master, you come upon a man drowning in the ocean, what f stop should you use?" Astonished, the master exclaimed to the novice, "Have I suffered so long a time with you and still you do not know the sunny 16 rule?”