Cypress field trip

 Now children, stay close

The turkey oaks are not a friendly folk

And the sweet gum are stuck up bums

I want you cypress to see

Not all trees have lovely knees.

Lady Isabella

 Lady Isabella  

by john clare

  She lures me to her tamed embrace 

  Pungent aromas wafting over once wild ways  

 Civility feigned in her tolerance of the Muscovy 

 Far cries from the gathering of the Timucuan

 Dugouts arriving to her unsettled banks 

 Drunk upon the black emetic around ceremonial

 fires circling to face General Gaines invading warriors. 

 Ever so often a shaft hurls from the sky  

As another fledgling Muscovy flies  

 Not from its own will 

 But in the clutch of the sreaming talons uncivil  

 Lady Isabella politely bows and nods 

 Pleased with the appeasing of her God.

Witness Trees

 Where two or three

Suwannee River 

At Prospect Primitive

When I pause by the three

Witness trees

I think of all they have seen

Going down into the 

Suwannee 

Coming back in newness of life

Day spell

 Day Spell

I do not know what overcame me

Perhaps it was her day lilies

I told her I didn't care if she was over eighty

Her lilies made her look under thirty to me.

The 180 low hurdler

 The low hurdler

John Clare Stokes

“He had started going to parties again, but without the hurdle race to run, the parties of his friends and neighbors seemed to him interminable and stale. He listened to their dirty jokes with an irritability that was hard for him to conceal. Even their countenances discouraged him, and, slumped in a chair, he would regard their skin and their teeth narrowly, as if he were himself a much younger man." from John Cheever's short story, O Youth and Beauty!

It was in the Spring of integration seventh grade that it was apparent I was going to need to find a new event. Up until we merged with East Williston I was a 100 and 220 yard dash speedster, or so I thought. For a white boy, so so, but against my ebony teammates, maybe show, not win or place.

I moved up to middle distance, the 440 and mile relay, but still I lacked the necessary strength and speed to excel.

It was Coach Dean who suggested I try the 180 low hurdle event. It required speed and skill to clear the hurdles. Only problem is the school had no hurdles, not even a track. So Coach had the shop class build a set of wooden hurdles, heavy and painful to hit. I’d set them out on the road between the gym and shop and proceed to try to train.

Time for the first meet in Chiefland came and I drew lane one on the cinder oval around the Indian football field. When the gun started us, I was off and won, or so I thought.

I was disqualified for not going over with both legs, but straddling them with only the lead leg going over. I know this was the result of hitting those ole wooden ones I trained on.

Eventually with the help of our new track coach Tom Honea and Coach Robinson assisting, I was able to excel at the hurdle event, setting school records that will never be beaten, for they eventually cancelled the 180 low hurdle event in high school.

I never made state, as Uncle Rico and I will always lament. Had Coach Honea only stayed for my senior year and had I not quit track to play basketball.…maybe that Jon Perry from PK Young and that guy with glasses from Lake Butler would have graduated and I’d take state, as I line up the furniture in the living room and prepare for another hurdle race, Melanie with gun in hand.

At Florida Relays with teammate Lorenzo Law on the 180 low hurdles

I have been a runner

 The runner

I’ve pretty much my entire life been a runner. On a hill in Virginia covered in apple trees, three pre-schoolers began running down the hill toward the cabin where the apple butter was cooking in a kettle. We ran so fast we couldn’t stop and my Grandfather Richard, my mothers father  and her two brothers Kermit and Don had to lock arms to catch my cousins Donna and David before we hit the cabin.

A few years later on another hill in Monticello, the coach had a race down the hill to the guardrail and back to determine the fastest third grader. Having moved from Sopchoppy, where all we did was run freely all over town, the new kid in school outran everyone. It was the ice breaker, for from then on, the boys wanted this fast third grader to be their friend. 

Years and years later on a sweltering hot July Saturday in Jasper, that little boy yet on that Virginia hill emerged from the shade to run down Hatley Street to take second in the 10k among so many friends cheering the boy home who wouldn’t stop.

O the dry

 Oh the dry, dry rivers

Now flood my memory

We did walk upon waters

He did bid

Come to me!

Don’t run

 Don’t run

Mamma doe said rest here beneath the grapes

Whatever you do, don’t run, I’ll be near by

If it’s time to run, I’ll make a sound of escape

But little fawns are hard of hearing besides

How can I be sure mamma is nearby?

And what if that long black thing is a gun?

What does mamma know?

No, I will run, run, run, run!

Mona Mona

  Avoiding the Mona

She would come to the Gallery

In search of me

Demure, coy smile enticing

It's all for arts sake

Just partake

I'd fall for her lines

Every time

Down with the Mona again.

Last Stands

 Last Stands  

Johnclarestokes  

 On the fields of Trenton far away,

 In the fading fall of sixty-seven,

 From the sky a ball spiraled his way,

 Lost in the vapor lamps under cool heaven.

 In the bleachers of away sat a father,

 Cheering the son on his long route,

 Can this time in young arms gather,

 the falling ball hidden by light?

  Into the end zone of home we reached,

 The clutching of pigskin in outstretched hands,

  A sound arose grander than any sermon preached,

  A father cheering his son from the stands.

  First touchdowns, victories, falling balls,

  So far from the fly route once ran, 

 But the one thing near he still recalls, 

 A fathers voice above the cheers in the stand,

  Way to go John!

The first shall be last

 The First shall be the last 

Johnclarestokes 

My father never wanted to leave Williston FUMC.  But ten years at a Methodist church is a long tenure. It was in the early years of the Charismatic Movement and “preacher” had the audacity to tell the congregation it was fine to raise your hands in praise. It was anathema to some of the more proper Methodists. I am sure there were many other reasons, even down to one boxer named Goliath who guarded the parsonage entrance on the school side. My father was never one to go with the grain. He was called a MethoBab, as he preached hard on sin and repentance with altar calls and not a feel good positive sermonette. This was largely from his early years in the Homewood Methodist as a boy to the Holiness doctrine of Asbury college and seminary. Coming to "First" church of Lake City, I feared the tenure would be short lived and it was. While many of this congregation were of common humility that was the majority, the upper room rulers who held the purse prevailed. It was a two year battle of Fanny Crosby or Bach, of vestal robes or goodwill suits. Of follow the bulletin or the Spirit leading. In the end, the Upper Room won and my dad said enough when the District Superintendent wanted him to locate to Quincy to build their "dead" First church up. Early on my dad got the reputation as a builder.  He opted instead to retire and become an Approved Evangelist of the Methodist conference, taking the Gospel to the small churches who couldn't afford the Ford Philpot Hour evangelists. We moved from the palative parsonage on Evergreen to Mrs Ives home on an unpaved St John's for around 16k and lived on frugal and mamma's Summers elementary salary. I was at Florida Southern during this time, coming back to stay in Lake City in 1979 following graduation. After four years as an Evangelist, my father retired to Crawfordville, then to his beloved Williston where he passed on to Orange Hill in March of 2011.

Eighty six stalks

 Eighty-six stalks 

Johnclarestokes 

We never counted how many sugar cane

stalks it took to make sixty gallons of

juice in the Columbus kettle to boil down

to ten gallons of bottled syrup

We never counted how many turns

it took to squeeze the juice from

the Georgia Red we fed

to fill the five gallon buckets

we poured into the boiling down.

We never counted the years we 

circled the mill on the old Gravely

we didn’t think we had to

It was taken for granted we had time to.