by john clare
Okeefenokee paddle strokes
Trembling under thwart
Bull Gators provoked
Island hammock snorts
Black bear splashing
Paddle strokes increasing
Into tannic crashing
Fear never ceasing
Into River Narrows
Suwannee's birth canal
The silence grows
Then screams and howls
Conceived into flow
Eternal toward sea
New secrets unfold
Birthed from Okeefenokee
Bob Jones in Dougon on River Narrows
I often get as much likes, but with zero feedback here. I do not even know who likes here. But lately it has been quite sad the low amount of likes on Facebook. I am to the point of posting less and less, to offset the frustration I causes me to see the same few day in and out. I post here mainly as a library for the poetry.
Wasn’t it a grand thing
When we’d gather in
the day with laughter
enough to chase all
cares away
Oh what a day
Hay foot John, Straw foot John, Keep marching John, The time will come John, When the old guard is gone John, And the guarded gate shall fall John, Oh Kingdom Come John, Hay foot John, Straw foot John, Kingdom Coming John.
We often don't associate it with
things pretty
But when I think of my daddy
I think of the lilies
the zinnias
the camellia
flowers he loved to grow
And I am thankful for a father
And I too now love the
things pretty.
Sandman Range
We climbed and climbed for hours on end
It seemed we’d never reach the summit
We heard beyond there was this vast ocean
We flung our lives as to the waves we’d plummet.
John Clare Stokes
In our Williston years, my father and I maintained a bed of worms, “the best you ever saw” said the late Bobby Sandlin who lived next door, the worm bed defining our property line. The bed was fed by the bantam chickens manure we raised in a pen my father made, by cow manure from the Elliot Whitehurst’s huge feedlots, and every scrap left from meals mamma made and the vegetables and leftovers from the garden beside the parsonage.
And people would come and we’d dig for them a hundred wigglers for a dollar, an easy task for there were thousands in big clusters when you turned up the rich compost.
When we moved from Williston to Lake City in 1977, as in all our prior moves, daddy took a large quantity of worms to start a new bed. My father always maintained one where ever we lived, for he loved to fish. Though the parsonage in Lake City was on Alligator lake, someone stole the Mercury kicker and the trials of first church didn’t allow for much fishing. I’m sure though the yard is well wormed. I don’t miss so much the digging, but I sure miss fishing with him in Pappy’s lake back in Williston.
Johnclarestokes
I used to love to visit my fathers office at the First United Methodist Church in Wiliston and just sit and look at the photographs of people I had known all my life. There were the turkey feet paper holders he made from the gobblers he loved to hunt. The large fish hook from his deep sea fishing with Fred Benton in Panacea and his symbol as a fisher of men, the bald is beautiful sign I thought so funny in the day before I followed suit. My father was appointed to Williston from 1967 to 1977, having returned to the Florida Conference after being the Alumni director and head of Public Relations at Asbury college, his ala mater n Wilmore, Kentucky. Williston, next to Crawfordville was the closest place to what we would call home, my brother Lewis calling Williston his hometown to this day. When we had my mothers funeral in the sanctuary a few years ago, where now what was once my fathers office was then the choir robe room and elevator entrance. Long time church secretary Nancy Whitehurst Etheridge told me it was now the ushers room. I told her Hank Radasky and Orville Wheeler, ushers when we were in Williston would like that. Walking in,I thought I heard Mrs Gutekunst his secretary asking what it was I wanted. I wanted nothing more than to pause and recall again Pappy Whitehurst and the chapel in his wifes honor, Dutch Fisher of Berry, Kentucky loving his Cincinnati Reds, leading singing at my fathers early revivals, Bishop John Branscomb of who I was named, Dr Zachary Taylor Johnson, the great friend and college President of Asbury, Rev Paul Stoneking his best college friend, hold Bobo our dog in Monticello again, see Goliath beneath the desk, hear the IBM selectric with the ball font humming a letter, recall Methodist Bishop Joel McDavid's visit, the Spradlins of Boyd, his first church, see the photo of his first deer in the Apalachcola forest with Moody Pearce of Crawfordville, Lewis winning the Levy Bicentinnal logo contest and read again the greatest story ever told I illustrated one Christmas for my father, making it to the highest point upon the now empty office wall. But the rotary phone rings, no, its the iphone and I have lingered too long and we must....we must....always we must.
Johnclarestokes
Alvin Lee I would listen to
going home, to see my baby
I'd love to change the world
Everywhere freaks and fairies
We thought yesterday
Back to two oh thirteen
and before that oh three
and on and on back the
Ten years after
And how much happened
In the last Ten Years After
And wondered what could
Possibly happen in the next
Ten Years Coming.
Johnclarestokes
And what of this old life?
Waters paddled upon
Rivers crooked and long
Some we've been upon
Many, many a time
Others never to see
Only in dream
In our Old Town journey
John Clare Stokes
in the latter years, came the cankerous men, burning, creating wastelands, removing the old landmarks, swarming, ravenous as locusts, wandering, devouring, in the aftermath, the drought came, in the parched wail, birthing, a new world, disordered, discordant, disconnected, decadent.
by Johnclarestokes
Father I trust you will forgive me
For they were Dollar General Zinnias
Four packs for a mere dollar
And I am not even sure
If I can get them to grow
the way they would for you,
Even though from far,far away
the seeds you'd let me spread,
little colored buttons soon opening
to sauce pan size growing,
and we would gather up a bouquet
upon the altar bowing as you prayed
the repentant would kneel near
the zinnias between you and their tears
watering them
perhaps revealing why
the zinnias grew so greatly.
Oh father
bless from on high
the dollar general zinnias
with my efforts be pleased.
Ernest Stokes, father of Luther Stokes in Homewood, Mississippi
