Tenting tonight

 tenting tonight

Tenting tonight 

On the old camp ground

Lightening bugs all around

Not a sound 

save the thousand mosquitoes 

drowning the chorus of cicadas

West corner

 Corner Plots 

john clare

Whenever I visit a cemetery

the first place I check

are the four corners

to see who got the compass plots

Joe Kirby in the black Bethel 

got the Western spot.

Colds of gold

 I cannot keep up

The pace is too rapid

In front the rainbow

To the rear rays

Astride the twisting up

Crows overhead

Mockingbird's below

Battery low

Resolution lower

On down the day goes

Jeopardy within

And Alex has a cold

Gold blind

 The grizzled old cyclist astride the lug steel antiquated downtube shifter rode directly into the sun, shunning the fashionable Oakley's, loathing the latest aerodynamic time shaving carbon device, speed the last thing he pursued, seeing distinctly in the glare the shimmering mirage of the old nemesis, with the lost friend motioning to bridge the gap, slowing momentarily to allow him to draft in the slipstream of his memory.

Gold train

 The grand Brittiany train 

  Wiggins, Stannard,Millar and Froome  

Steeled to bring Cavendish fame 

  But from the rear one  

  The Kazakhstan man old 

 One Alexandr Vinokurov

 And from the young Brits steals 

 The glory of the gold

Gulfs of Gold

 We were inseperable, two boys from Sopchoppy, wading in Wakulla waters, from Mashes Sands to Ochlocknee, jellowjackets in black and gold we were.

Still rope swings

 still ropes sway, slowly to and fro, in rhythm to flow, ripples circling out, still ropes sway, slowly to and fro, invisible still force, immersing totally, still ropes sway, slowly round and round, harmony found, we all swing down, way down we go, to and fro slowly.

Johnclarestokes

Smokehouse

 Yesterday I came upon another piece of the past that will help me to reconnect to the future. I found the Ison's Nursery and Vineyard  

catalog my father ordered his grapes on December 11, 1978. At the time my father was nearly at the end of his two year ministry in Lake City from 1977 to June of 1978. This would be his last church, as he formed the Luther R Stokes Evangelistic Association, purchased an old house on St.John's Street and spent more time in Crawfordville, the twenty-acre property he purchased from Mrs Lucille Towles in the late sixties. Typed inside the catalog was the note: Grapes around garden in backyard, starting at smokehouse: Two Dixie, One Pride, One Chief, Two Noble, Two Jumbo, One Southland, Two Sugargate, Three Cowart.  Pictured is the smokehouse, the first out building my father and I built behind the old house. I have the bell on the cross tie in my backyard. I plan on ordering these same grapes from Ison's in Brooks, Georgia  and planting them in my backyard in the same order.

Color of wind

 color of wind

john clare stokes

i bend and face the colors

in the wind

enveloping me in the hues

as today a vivid blue

chose to color me

saturating my being

in the wind seeing

the mood blowing

gently then briskly

from ultramarine to 

cobalt to a phthalo

as from the west 

came the silver gray winds

 so prevalent today

overtaking the colors of blue.

Judy’s tree

 Judy's Tree

I have written of Judy's Tree before. Today I took a twenty mile bicycle ride into the Osceola National Forest via the old Still Road, stopping to pay respect to the Judy Tree along NFR 278 or now McColsky Avenue. And who you say, was Judy? Judith Hancock in 1979 became one of most ardent friends of the environment when the DOT cut down a legacy oak tree by Popeye's chicken in Lake City for the widening of US90. "It was a really big, nice old oak tree, and I was incensed, absolutely incensed, because they could have avoided it," she said. "I joined the garden club and fought it, put nasty signs up and tied yellow ribbons around it, but they eventually cut it down." At the suggestion of a Garden Club member, Judy joined the Audubon Society, and the rest, as they say, was history. Judy passed away from cancer on June 28, 2004 at the age of 65, with the Osceola and Florida losing an ardent, tireless defender of things wild.

Several years ago, Steve Williams, a fellow Audubon member and long time friend of Judy and I placed this plaque in the crooked pine Judy when living always would point out as we passed, as her tree.

Castle Hell

 Castle hell

I've nearly completed Castle Hell

It was of my own making

Taking brick by brick all resentments

And cementing them in memory

Life's blueprints tried to tell me

Not with resentments

 But with forgiveness 

Light and airy

But I was not one to follow rules

So I continued to build this

Castle of a fool.

John Clare

 He paused at the waters edge.... peering beyond into the cypress swamp....Hearing that elusive Ivory Bill calling....Cross over into the darkness falling....it was not my claim...to receive a poets name....my life has been an eighty mile journey....to find my Mary Joyce...not my choice...the name was given to me....