Verbenadale

 Verbenadale

Prepare to meet thy God

was a welcome to a remnant

Once beneath this canopy they trod

to bask in the golden glory sent.

Williston, Florida

Lot

Lots

Few are the Lots

Who move on

Without looking back

Forgetting the past

Forging for the future

I'm more the wife

In this life

Incessantly turning

Salt forming upon my

Gazing face

What was

What was

More alluring

Than

What will

What will 

I came to the garden

 I came to the garden

John Clare Stokes

 

In the back yard of Pilgrims Rest at Crawfordville, Florida, the county seat of Wakulla, Rev Luther Ray Stokes, my father,  grew rows of old fashion scuppernong grapes of many varities, HIggins, Fry, Jumbo and others he acquired locally in Wakulla County and through the Stokes, Park and Ison catalogs he always had on hand. Inside this large square arbor, with the three wire fence on which the grapes ran, with pear and persimmon trees for shade, he called the Garden of Rest. Here, over the years he performed several weddings, held a few outdoor meetings of his Evangelistic Association but mostly just to sit and prepare his sermons in the peaceful surroundings. As a boy and young man, I was always in awe of the vast knowledge my father had for growing, for knowing the ways of the animals, the seasons and human nature. Much of what little I know today I acquired from observing my father, from a little boy atop his workshop bench in Sopchoppy to a young man trying as best I could to emulate his ways on how to drive the tractor, when to plant or how to decipher his sometimes exasperated instructions I wasn’t getting. He liked to give nicknames to those he was endeared to and I can recall his calling for "Jumpy" to come sit with him in the garden of rest....

Jumpy was me and I’d give anything to still have that Garden of Rest today to return to and just sit a spell in the cool of a Wakulla morning, of course, while the dew is still on the scuppernongs.

Luther’s Lilies

 Luther's Lilies

John Clare Stokes 

along the edge of the path

under the shade of the oak

the lilies planted by Luther Stokes

pose for their photograph.

come the sultry days of june

when low the spirit sinks

among Luther's lilies i think

and soon i lift a tune.

Thank you Luther for your love

you gave to me for the lilies

the overwhelming created beauty

I send my thanks to you above.

Old Homewood

 Ole Homewood

Johnclarestokes 

My father first began growing and making sugar cane syrup in the mid seventies after acquiring from Wakulla County farmers the necessary implements,the old Golden Mill, the Columbus 60 gallon kettle and various straining tools, one being an old Chevy moon hubcap with holes drilled in it. When we lived in Sopchoppy in the fifties and sixties, we would annually attend the syrup cooking of Bert Rodenberry and Kenneth Strickland who taught my father how to properly cook the syrup, though he already knew much from his growing up on a farm.  He got a local brickmason Mr Dick Snyder,  to make his first chimney and kettle holder in what we called the sugar shack, a little cabin built around the kettle with a bath,kitchen and bedroom where we spent much of our time heated by the old wood stove. He called his syrup, Old Homewood, after the town in Scott County Mississippi where he was born and raised. I drew up some labels for the wild turkey and store bought bottles. With the help of the trusty Gravely tractor rigged on the cross beam to stay locked in a turning direction, it was up to the children and grandchildren and various relatives and friends to feed the stalks of cane into the mill, remembering sometimes not to duck each time the pole came around, giving all a laugh at their expense. It was our annual tradition at Thanksgiving to cook down the cane juice in the 60 gallon kettle to about ten gallons of syrup, the process usually finishing around noon where mamma and the girls usually had the tables under the trees ready for wonderful eating. It was always a tense and sometimes testy moment just before the kerosene fire from the rabbit box burner was turned off and the boiling came to an end. Too long and the syrup would be full of black flecks or dregs, too soon and it would not have the right consistency. Knowing when to dip the syrup out at the precise specific gravity from the hydrometer, usually around 16 we used to measure the syrup, or when the syrup candied when spilling off the dipper was  often a hit and miss experiment. I still have several bottles of Old Homewood and tell myself, someday I will set up the Golden mill, which I recently did in the back yard after my father passed away in March of 2011, leaving it all to me, but it is looking more and more like this tradition may have died when my father did in Williston. I hope not.

Feast of Lona

 Feast of Lona

Over the valley descended legions of dragonflies

Sent forth to part the Skeeter cloud

Throughout the fields came curdling cries

The reign of blood vanquished from the skies.

Parsing through the crimson sea of carnage

Grateful on this field for their merciful deed

Who could discern the Master's hand?

How His dragoons today would feed.

Eek from the crumbs below the tables

Upon the heights over the finest gables

Fly the armies of Lazarus above fertile ground

Deaf to pleas to please send a prophet down.

Not even the dogs lingered to lick the wounds

As the streams to Lona leeched a dull red

The dragonfly bands obscuring a waning moon

As the host of heaven from Lona were led. 

l

Post a cat

 I find it a reality

Unless it’s a photo 

Of a kitty

Or a puppy

People don’t give

A crap for poetry

Or anything 

That isn’t 

Vinnie

Ruby 

Winka

Roscoe

Dick coming

 Dick coming

From the front room office window

From the slats open just a crack

The far rumbling of the old engine

I know from where that sounds coming

Can even tell it's loaded down

Dick Orander taking us home

Quickly, lift me to the curb

Give to me the silver script passage

Can't miss the Northfork-Crumpler line

Coming for me one final time.

Snail Mail

 Snail mail

You'd think in our advanced social media world

If we wanted to get our message across

It would be marvelously easy

 But I may as well be in the 19th century

Quill pen dipping in India Ink

Scribbling upon fine parchment paper

Rolling the note into a corked bottle

Casting it to the outgoing tide

Awaiting your finding it on your far shore

Going through the same process

To reply

Before we die

For what is any different?

Zuckermen and his analytic logarithms

See to it

Our notes in our bottles

Bobble endlessly out to sea

Unread

Unseen

In obscurity.

Williston

 Things done

They are tearing down old Williston High and Elementary this week. No one seems to mind, they have a new school out on 27. Somehow I mind, in a sentimental manner. Things done to Williston, once my hometown, still my hometown, still affects me. The First Baptist Church. Why did they keep the atrocious Neal building and build the uber ugly metal building beside it? The long abandoned Winn Dixie shell on 121. Bulldoze it how about it? The entire downtown parking on the store frontage. Why didn’t they tell DOT to shove it, build a bypass if you must. The city hall. What took so long? Top of hill. Why the empty field so long where Holiday Inn stood. Hospital. How it came to be closed a crying shame. 

Chick Inn, Carse Oil. More sad Shame. I’m sounding way too negative on my town, there have been nice improvements. I just hate to come every Sunday and see the state it’s in, compared to my memory. I really dread coming this week and seeing  a missing school. And finally, has Pesso been tar and feathered yet? And will someone run that Devils Den bunch out so we can skip school again there?

Mothers knees

 Mothers knees

Mothers knees braced  

 Kept me tall  

Safe from fall  

Today I stand 

 The strong man  

With burdens my own 

 And though I am grown  

Far from home 

When I'm alone

 Not so strong 

 In my weakness I see 

 My mothers knee

Focused

 Focused

I don’t think Bob Jones ever knew I snapped the Kodachrome photograph of him intently focusing and composing on the composition in the Nantahala. Each October for several years we would travel up in his VW orange and white van to photograph fall colors, camping along the way. I’d usually have already found my shots and I’d be waiting, and waiting for Bob to set up the tripod, focus, check the Gossen meter, focus, check the angle, focus, set the Nikon F aperture, focus, check the shutter, focus and take the “damn!” photo. 

And we’d move on and repeat the scene. I never saw that many of Bobs photos from those trips. Sadly, due to his trailer not having A/C, mold formed eventually and ruined them, including his lenses. 

The saddest day came, when I went to visit Bob, his dementia advanced, he asked me, “Didn’t we used to take photos together?” 

Yes, Bob, and I’d give anything to wait for you to focus that scene again.