Levels

 Levels

John Clare Stokes

Mine has been a life of levels

Of sometimes being on  the

 highest point 

To view the horizon

Of dwelling below the tree line

Of doing my dead level best

To capture the rising whether

It be sun, or water or fire

Of finding comfort in the dwelling 

in the lower 

levels only left behind for the

metoroic climb 

the lone dweller from the lower level

A seeing Helen Adams Keller

Telling those who were searching

that Orion can be best seen from the deepest well

And not atop this sun drenched hill.

Big Shoals

Suwannee River when low

Bye bye

Bye bye Miss American pie

Drove my Chevy Nova in Levy

But the water tower was dry

And good ole Williston boys 

Were drinking whiskey and rye

Singing this will be the place that

 I die.  

The wild child

 Wild Child

John Clare Stokes 

After Yeats the Stolen Child 

By the bank beneath the broken sign

By the boat beside the fishing dock

There ran the wild child by the shore

The wild child that mother forgot

By the lodge lounging at the bar

By the downing of another shot

There ran the wild child by the door

The wild child that father forgot

By the asphalt cracked unmarked

By the dumpster beside this lot  

There ran the wild child by the parked

The wild child that brother forgot 

By the time we called out for her

By the time she left our spot 

There ran the wild child but a blur 

The wild child that sister forgot.

By the tree stand by the Range

By the trail the creature was shot

There ran the wild child so strange

The wild child we all forgot.

The sting

 The sting

In the midst of the birthing 

Always lurking the sting 

Whispering, your dyings coming

Clinging, to the promise given

Not so, not so, o sting.

A poem

 A poem

is when you have the sky in your mouth.

It is hot like fresh bread,

when you eat it,

a little is always left over.

A poem

is when you hear

the heartbeat of a stone,

when words beat their wings.

It is a song sung in a cage.

A poem

is words turned upside down

and suddenly!

the world is new.

~ Jean-Pierre Simeón (from the book This Is a Poem That Heals Fish

Foolish Pleasures

 Wild the Mare

John Clare Stokes

 In Williston sand longing

to conceive in

A field of record yields 

Beneath a September rising and falling over and again

The burrowing owl came 

From below eyes wide open

To the commotion turning

Totally around as if looking back was acceptable while upon the hill in the stable

Kicking against the stall

The wild mares mane trembled from the rising and

The falling

Wanting so desperately to

Join the conception 

Bringing record yields

In fields under cover of night

While in far away Kentucky

Came the one

They would call

 Foolish Pleasure

Conceived amid owls and sandy legumes galore

To gain glory in a derby

Far from the wild mare

Kicking desperately.

Path of most resistance

Beyond the Blue Blaze

Every hike is usually from blaze to blaze, following the well trodden way. There are times, when water is low and the blaze not clear, we dare venture beyond the blue blaze, to find perchance, a path of great resistance with wonders never known.

 

Road Side Song

 In every roadside ditch the throng 

of bloom and blossom lifts in song

Humbly with exuberant praise lifting

To this wondrous life His gift

Speed on to the byway of praise 

Head on toward the eternal day

Blazing Stars beneath cobalt heaven 

Swaying grass we in a moment given

So Praise! praise! All creatures sing

Lift up! Lift up! Too soon to wing!

In Kerwin Country

 Moonball 

It was a rather disconcerting event

And I do not think I was meant

To witness it

But upon the rising down Mallory 

Swamp way

The dead oak took the sap

And began to toss back and forth

A hapless moon.

Kaintuckbreaks

 Kaintuckbrakes

Deep in the wild never glade

Where moccasins and bull gators stayed

And even Seminoles dared not wade

We came upon this lair of despair

Where in the oaken trees hung effigies 

To which these padded blueskins prayed

O give us great Ruppking a victory

To prove we do not follow Thee vainly

But the Ruppking was tauntingly silent

And into extinction went the Kaintuckbrakes

While Gators and moccasins mocked their fate.

Up the holler

Up the holler 

John Clare Stokes

So grateful in the fall of twenty twelve

We were able to take mamma to see

The old holler where she came to be

As we rode to Crumpler she would tell

now that was where Evelyn and I 

took that poor snake and burnt it

And there is where we paid with script

Where up Crumpler Mountain we’d slip

There’s the Methodist Church where Rev Looney

first suggested I should attend Asbury

Where Luke and I were later married

Where Gerald always held in my heart a tune

The old whistle post just beyond the church

Still towered rusting, once calling miners home

Out from the Pocahontas hills into the stucco homes

Or roused at night, the wailing telling that deep down something

had gone terribly wrong

Turning to return to Bluefield then Princeton

Rounding slowly another steep switch back

In my imagination I could clearly see

Her daddy’s bus full of miners and one

found kitty named Black Daisy

Bringing it home for his sweet Clara Jean.

Nectar moon

 Nectar moon