Three things

 There are three things which are too

wonderful to me, yea, four which I know not:

The way of a kite in the air

The way of a serpent upon a rock

The way of a ship in the midst of the sea

And the way of a man with a maid.

Hummingbirds travail

 Hummingbirds travail

The ever working ones in the yard 

Isn’t life for them trying enough

To contend with wasps rough

enough to put a sting quite hard

Rails to boat tails

 From Rails to Boat tails 

Waiting for Magritte 

Johnclarestokes 

Does everything align to your reason?

Must there exist rational explanation for everything?

If I showed you a mystery we shall not all sleep

Would you lie awake nights your soul to keep?

The silver queen

 The Silver Queen

Johnclarestokes 

He would stop along the way to some humble 

abode and ask intently why no interest

Why she had land and horses and the best family

Are you just of another persuasion?

And she’d assure him not and pray just someway

to get away

For the evening was coming

When under the cover of darkness

to slip away and meet the Silver Queen

to lie in the watermelon fields and listen

as the coyotes and hounds called to her

The girl with the horses long since sleeping

dreaming of her coming preacher boy

but he never came 

For he too was under the spell of the 

Silver Queen

And it wasn’t until years later

The grandson came

But by then the old preacher 

Upon his dying bed

could only gaze into his eyes 

without a word

That’s the price one pays

to give his love to the Silver Queen

her gestation measured in years 

the grandson exiled to her island.

Was a lover

 Yesterday 

Johnclarestokes 

Four swallowtail 

Above me did sail

Above me did sail

Today

Three buzzards 

Above me did hover

Above me did hover

Tomorrow

Two cardinals 

Above me will discover

Above me will discover 

Forever

This man

Below them was a lover

Below them was a lover

Rivers Narrows

 River Narrows  

 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

Posts

 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. 

Sons of fathers

 Fathers of sons

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

Marching John

 Marching John 

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.

Fathers Day

 When it comes to Father's day

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 Ridge

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.

 

To open a bed of worms

 To open a Bed of worms

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.