From Oval Frames

 From oval frames

Johnclarestokes 

Freed at last from the oval frame

From Crumpler the studious girl came

Sitting in the parlor quietly she read

Then far into the night upon her bed

Coal fields outside frozen in purest snow

To thaw into springs of darkest flow

Lost in a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs

My every thought upon the girl so wonderful 

In the leaves falling from the holler hills

In the summers first cooling chill

The studious girl forever reading quietly

To my children’s children far into the night gently.

Meme’s Roll call up yonder eight years ago today at 1:11.

Between the lines

 Between the lines

Once there was the time

When in our dairies written

A pain far beyond crying

Of secret lovers so smitten

I’ve read of the special recipes

Who the Sunday guests were

But ne’er the heart kept secret

The preachers wife framed perfectly

But I could read between her lines

For I too kept the heart hidden

Two souls of the poetic mind

The deepest pain of love n’er written

And now the words are sealed

What’s written as a language foreign

Only in eternity to be revealed

The deepest love right in the open

Revealed between the lines.

Moulage it

 Moulage it

John Clare Stokes

Before comes the

Trampling

When in sand

The delicate print

Remains

Take the plaster

And mix it just so

Return from your

Journey long

Pick it up and

Take at least

Some remnant home.

Sad smoke

Sad Smoke

John Clare Stokes

Whatever came of our little lad

Whenever we made a fire outside

He was always there by our side

His pitch fork stabbing the pine straw

Watching the white smoke

Happily consuming it all.

This evening we burned a pine pile

On the hill

It was a good day with an 

Autumn chill

But something was amiss 

With the fire

It kept wafting low toward

The back porch door

Searching we were sure 

For the little boy

As so I finally stuck his pitch fork

Next to mine

On the hill

And for the moment

Lured the sad smoke back.

Orange Hill Hymn

 Orange Hill Hymn

John Clare Stokes

A tree that has long moved me is atop Orange Hill Cemetery in Williston, Fla, place where so many of my loved ones and friends rest from their battles, their struggles, their quest to find the light amid this present darkness.

The poem is dedicated to our common battle.

Does a new day bring light?

Has the light swallowed the dark?

Come day a squint into bright

The beams still painfully sharp.

On goes the gauze again

In streams the soothing dark

Not ready to walk in gleams

of light beams deadly sharp.

Many meant for the night

Few called to walk wide waking

Freed from the terrible fright

Always giving, never once taking.

In countless wards the halt

The little wars raging on

Light brigades assault for naught

the darkness ever so strong.

Allured to the prospect of sight

We wave the truce flag and stare

into the blinding beams of night

as captured we fall into the lair.

Hand on shoulder on shoulder on

the line of the lame snakes along

Til all glimmers are finally gone

No one remaining to recall home.

And on the Orange Hill quiet

Faint strains from old hymns

A remnant chants into the night

Pulls the weeds and remembers

Pearl and all of them

Awaiting.

Don’t call common

 Common and unclean

John Clare Stokes

You can imagine

The chagrin

Of the butterflies

Lowering the swing

Not so my Lord

I am too old to 

Imagine

And the butterflies

Raised the swing

Again they lowered

The swing

Not so my Lord

For I am grown

I do not swing

It was then

I heard a voice

Do not call what I

Have declared

Imaginative playing

Something

Common and 

Above your

Aging

Misty orisons

 The moon orisons

Misty were my morning orisons

the theme this orb adrift

If not for the ordered ordained spin

These spirits would never lift.

Wonder pony

 Wonder Pony

I had a marvelous life with

Wonder Pony

When I first got him as a

Toddler in

Sopchoppy 

I could barely reach his 

Springs 

And his fierce rocking 

Scared me

Eventually he let me sit

Upon his hard plastic

Saddle

My feet upon the wooden

Stirrups

Soon we were riding all out

Dipping nearly to the

Floor

Springing back nearly

Toppling 

Wasn't long we were

Leaping lines

Clearing them

Every time

He can still clear them

Sixty years since just like

The first time we did

I outgrew the pony

But not the wonder

Within.

A tenuous beauty

 A tenuous beauty

The Virginia Meadow Beauty grows upon an exposed rock of Big Shoals from low water levels.

Grace greater

 Greater Grace

It was the day of my fathers funeral. We were out at the graveside on Orange Hill, March of 2011 in Williston. I was to play a hymn on the harmonica. As I listened to pastors Joe Smith then Wes Smith, my time drew nearer. I did not have a hymn. I asked silently for an answer. It was then, almost as soon as I asked, that Wes inexplicably said, he asked my father one time what his favorite hymn was, and he told him it was Grace greater than our sin. I had the answer. Without practice, I played the hymn.

I think of Him and him whenever it's played, which was today at Christ's Fellowship Baptist.

One comes

 One comes as the sons father

I am sure that you are not unlike me, that when you perform certain tasks, you feel for a fleeting moment, a loved one gone on is near. Come the fall, when I build a fire in the old syrup kettle my father and I once made cane syrup in, he seems to be near, just upon the other side in the beams.

Oaths back

Paths back

In the entering of the path back

One recalls the time of beginning

When extending it seemed such

The never ending journey.