No Admission

 No admittance

So much has gone behind

The locked door

I knock but no one

Answers

So much has gone on

Behind there

At times I think it best

The door never opens

Others

To kick it in

Edgefield

 At the edge of the field

 Nothing but uphill asphalt

So I took a pause

At the edge of the field

Took a deep inhale

And laid upon the grass

So tranquil

By Owl

 By owl

JohnClare Stokes

By owl 

I choose to go

Quietly

Never knowing 

What caught me

They will find

Me

A neatly compacted

Deposit of scat

And know 

Only then

It was by owl

Yes

I believe it to be

barred owl

By which he went.

Up

 Up

It's the desire of the 

Flightless

To keep the fliers

Grounded

The desire of the 

Fliers

To inspire the

Grounded 

To rise

The Lost Child

 Lost Child

Aghast! The three year young 

Claire grabbed Yeats

Tore off his covering

Clutched him to her little

Breast

My favorite book!

She exclaimed

Trotting off with Yeats

Holding him by the red

Nape of the Poem mark

Choking the life

Out of him.

Jonah in the bottle

 Jonah in a bottle 

Don't know how long

Jonah was in the bottle

Probably longer

Than in the belly

Of the fish

How these quiet

Prophets wind up

In these fixes

Is a mystery

Nineveh 

Needs a message

And Jonah is

Stuck in a bottle

Somewhere in 

Florida

In this dream

 In this dream

In this dream

I'm waking

Seeing beside me

One so long

Since grown

Staring straight

Through me

I try and touch him

But my hand

Falls upon the pillow

Beyond him.

Ole Homewood

 Ole Homewood

John Clare Stokes

It was good

As it stood

Slave Gavin built it

Turn of century

Four squared it

Lucille Towles sold it

home with ten acres

late sixties

Luther Ray grew on it

muscadine and cane

Then blight 

Came around two thousand 

Can't explain

The gone insane

Movers came

Took a year

All so dear

Cut in two down dog trot 

towed to Sopchoppy 

In a day bulldozers came

ten acres turned under

Torn asunder it

Lucille’s promise

told to Luther Ray 

Broken

Never to sell

Or fell

The old oaks

Some folks

Don't take it

Seriously

Promises

To have and hold

Til death do us part

Preferring rather

To Rip the heart

From the fat lightered

never painted pine.

Turning under

family and all left behind.

My poor shadow

 The shadow beside nobody

The shadow is not enamored

With celebrity 

The shadow cares less

If he's well known

The shadow is content

To follow or to lead

To be long and slim

Or short and squat 

To be halt

It doesn't mind

Even when the sun don't shine

upon the one he's 

Stuck with.

Midwife Missouri

 Midwife

"And because the midwives feared God, He gave them families."

Exodus 1:21.

John Clare Stokes

They were the bone lean days following

the late great war of Northern invasion,

the long drawn death thro's of a nation

but for the love of Laura, Sherman sparing,

his terrible swift sword taking Florida's life,

Georgia feeling the ravages of spurned victory,

the orange blossom never to fall into his bands of savagery. 

Into these times of lean came to be a midwife.

Sabbath days at Hopewell Primitive Rev.Eubanks would pray,

For Charles, Eliza, Willey and Missouri's little Cauley

And that day on the bare toes he would step lightly,

for these famished souls had enough already of hell and misery.

Too far away to send for Doc Ives in the first horseless Buick,

Twenty-five miles from Lake City an ocean-like eternity

by mule,through sand way up and lost on the Suwannee, 

but not the midwife the labor cries she would seek.

Beside the birthing beds from Benton to Suwannee Shoals,

Missouri the unmarried midwife was to all as a  mother,

her pleasurable sins so easily forgiven her,

Missouri Wheeler by whose hand came so many souls.

And in the dead of night along the old Suwannee river flowing,

The new mother blesses the midwife who they could not pay,

But the wages for Missoui the men found a way,

Script beyond the folding,more precious than any money golden.

As told not literal, but poetic.

Milk and wine

 Of milk and wine. In the sincere delivery of the given milk, a breeze through the open portals stirred, gently rippling over tears and wine spilling,entering all in the mystery.

After Whistler

 Today I collaborated with Whistler. Combining our images. It was a quick study. I shall return and expand just as Whistler would do.