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....

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.