Sans sons

 Those sons of Isaac

And Jacob wrestled with that bike all night

While the squirrel Esau barbecued was out of sight

To a fathers delight 

Sea lovers

 Sea Lovers

Johnclarestokes 

After the smoked mullet and foaming brews

As the morning catch iced on the slimy dock

And as the stinking chum began to stew

Into the ocean the two lovers did drop

Pressed against the rusting rail they clasped

Gulls scattering from oyster shells openly seeping

Lurching out beyond memories of caresses past

Far from the bar the lovers were swept

Throw the Jim Buoy to rescue the down fallen 

tumbling couple tangling in monofullfillment

Slowly sinking to Asrai’s calling 

Beyond the grasp of mortal help

And yearly we return to gather on the docks

Throw the wreaths to appease the craven sea

As the tide swells and the waves lift

upon the outgoing tide receiving the gifts

We raise a toast to lovers whom oceans need.

Bait face

 Bait face

John Clare Stokes

She decided she’d 

go fishing Sunday

so she fixed up her face

took a sultry selfie

So far she’s caught 

five 

Don’t know the limit

Or even if she has

A license

Sweep stroke

 Sweep stroke 

John Clare Stokes

It wouldn't take much

To sweep me 

You could even be gangly

And gnarly

But if you came to my abode

Toting your kayak

With a pack full of

Poems you wanted

Me to help you meld

into a sonnet

While we floated 

Upon some clear stream

Sublime

You'd be mine.

The Gospel Mile

 The gospel mile

John Clare Stokes

If anyone has ever run the mile on a track, for time, one cannot appreciate the agony and euphoria. The gospel mile is my analogy. Lap one is Matthew, all your genealogy of workouts, of the sprinting power poles, hills, long distance, pacing go into play. Lap two is Mark, you usually run your fastest, most confident lap before the wall is met. Lap three is Luke. By now you’re in need of a physician as you starve for oxygen. You do not think you can continue at the needed pace. You need grace. Lap four is John. The mystical experience. The way revealed. You get that second wind as spent you find the energy to run beyond yourself. The barriers are broken and you run not upon your air, but the air that comes from above. 

Laying in the infield, looking up at the stars of day, waves of adrenaline coursing through the legs still twitching, you are at one. You are a miler.

Exact Instant

 Exact Instant

John Clare Stokes

Do you recall the exact time

You crossed the finish line

Stumbling forward to fall

spent in waiting arms

Not a world record

But your personal record

to be written in the diary 

and recalled years later

Amazed at your prowess? 

I do

Elizabeth lives

 Elizabeth lives

John Clare Stokes

She sent me a poem from the other side

To assure me in eternity we shall abide

Lately I've feigned the journey there

Seemed a land void of poetic melody

 She assured me

There's poetry a plenty

Why she sat with Blake beneath 

The fabled tree of life

Yeats waved clasping the lost child tight

Clare out there in the far pasture

Mary Joyce up on his shoulders

Thanks Ms Noyes for the assurance 

I'll try and weather this temporal disturbance.

Whence the Day

 Whence the day

John Clare Stokes

I told my love

There are fields

I know of

Where the fritillary 

Hover in reach

Above

Where there is

No time

No time at all

And that is why

I want to take you there

1000 words

 Once I was told something to the effect a picture tells a thousand words, so I wrote a thousand words about the picture.

Rev Eubanks

 Between the water and the word...there stood a mile of wood...Brother Eubanks would wax long....Long after our thoughts had turned toward water....

Dixie Lily

 It was Palm Sunday and our long journey home was not lined with palms but littered with the charred stubble of cotton fields, the rubble of a lost cause strewn before us, not the kingdom of jubilo we had fought for, the old home place on her last breath of an iron lunged reconstruction...not even ole Gabriel the mule to lift the joist to level the sunken porch....taken to bear the strain for the rogues now in control....in the overgrown grass out back...I bent and picked some of the wild hurricane lily's growing under the pecan canopy....found one of the few unbroken jars and made an arrangement....It stood in stark contrast....but I knew the rubble called the South would some day.... like these white lilies....rise despite the storm and bring again a beauty to this land of Dixie....

First trip

 It was his first canoe trip in the Okeefenokee. Robert "Bob" Jones and I loaded his new Kevlar and Fiberglass Mohawk canoe and we set out from the Stephen Foster  Park in the refuge at the end of 177. Our plan was to paddle West down Billy's Lake, through River Narrows and to the Suwannee River Sill. He did well on his first outing and by the time we made our lunch stop along the banks of the Sill, he was fast asleep. We unloaded and made him a makeshift bed from life preservers, towels and boat cushions. Someday I pray to be able and take him and his son upon the same trip.