Times I think of her
Up there in that second
Mountain home
Alone with family
I think
This could have been mine
The walks in the cool morning
Stops in shops for antiques
But she did not want this for me
She was rather insistent
Upon not sharing it with one
Who stayed home
Never went with her
Always chasing after him
Expecting someday he’d reform
Oh maybe when I’m eighty
She will have pity
And admit
I wish you’d been mine
From the fourth grade on.
The CrossPoint Church
Will not offer fun
The theme is suffering
Bethel AME offers
The Jesus Connection
No devices allowed
The Church of Christ
Will have a backyard
Adventure of Exploring
Gods word
Burning stakes will
Begin promptly at 6pm.
Oak Grove Baptist
Will simply hold one
No theme
Bring your own axe
Southside Baptist
In lieu of bounce house
Cotton candy and games
Will offer a concentration
Camp experience
Grace Life regrets to
Inform the
Incrediworld Amazement Park
Was too ambitious and will
Offer a dark catacomb adventure.
Four area Methodist churches
Pooled to form an abundant Orchard
But instead will portray forty days in the wilderness being tempted.
Our sincere apology to the
Serpents who had planned to
Strike rocks, eat manna, make
Golden crafts.
There are places reserved
Places possibly all know
But to us especially special
It is there we can go.
John Clare Stokes
There are man made helps
Out there
Ways to kick start the soar
The hot dark brew in a favorite mug
The purring kitty
The watchful dog
The comfortable chaise free of dew
Fresh hummingbird nectar
A waning moon
Clear blue heavens
some Cortazar
And soon I’m soaring
John Clare Stokes
Ahhh, good ole July I so looked forward to
for it meant the Tour de France to us few
Roger, Professor and Rick mostly
each our favorite rider to cheer for stage victories
It used to be the Americans like Lance
and Floyd or the French and Italian like Fignon,
Basso or the Pirate Pantani
Caught up in doping and removing victory from
history
Heroes were few
But we found new ones
Young and fast Sagans
Air the old gatorskins again to 110 psi
Squeeze into the stretched thin Lycra kit
Cinch the old dated Bell helmet for a spin
Just up Rossi Road hors category hill breathless
But hey, wasn’t I a Magnus fast coasting down!
Via bottle,pill, snuff, snort,needle
Or smoke
Are so uninspired
It's no wonder we are so low
It was in the summer of ten
And we had survived the winter of nine
So we journeyed up to the remote Roline
Sissy the dog with us for the first time
From a year spent mostly kneeling and prone
To a year just to be grateful to be home
Who that tappin’
John Clare Stokes
Today I stood in the same spot
Trusting in position
To catch the Spirit blowing
Knowing He comes when we
Least expect or deserve
Not in the assurance
Not in the offering
Not in the praying
Not in the word proclaimed
And I was grieved
Moving into the aisle
Turning to leave
When suddenly I turned
A tapping within
Welling up
He was there in it all
Just a step from where
He last called.
John Clare Stokes
Once we remarked what a lovely display
Old Southron charm, wistful to see
Gone the old ways of the Johnson's
Hydrangeas witness this fallen kingdom.
John Clare Stokes
The old shop on the road to Bell closed at last
Sad the case when the sons move from the past
The little horsey once happily ridden lingering
anticipating the return of the son never coming.
Intaglio etching
Farewell, old Coila’s hills and dales
Her healthy moors and winding vale’s:
The scenes where wretched Fancy roves,
Pursuing past, unhappy loves!
Farewell, my friends! farewell, my foes!
My peace with these, my love with those
The bursting tears my heart declare,
Farewell, the Bonnie banks of Ayr!
Robert Burns
It was this week in 1976 we were in Homewood, Mississippi for one of our too few family reunions. It was the last time we would ever see
many, it would be years before we saw many again.
My cousin Jeanne Bradford Rowland would know the relation, but before we left to return to Williston with mamma, Lewis and Goliath in the Dodge van, we stopped at William Henry and Juliah Hettie Browns farm. I gathered they were
a huge influence in my fathers growing up in Homewood. Henry at the time was 81. He would pass on ten years later. Hettie was 79 and would live until 1992. Daddy would live until 2011, mamma 2017.
These are the lost stories of a past I wish I had somehow recorded, heard and known.
All that’s left is a love etched in a zinc plate.
