Metaphor for mother

 Metaphor for mother

Today i came upon a simple scene

That summed Meme succinctly 

The lamp for her late night toiling

The word for her faith never flagging

The desk for her constant writing

The preserves for her cuisine cooking.

The roaring

 Roaring Creek

Flowing to the Suwannee River

To the roaring 

They tell me to take them

To the source of the roaring

They ask me

Is it easy to access

Can anyone come to the roaring

And I sigh

For I fear I have revealed a place

Not of roaring

But whispering

In dream

 In dream

I’ve been to places 

Never seen

Traveled great distance

Without going

Gazed upon strangers faces

Intensely knowing

Won countless races

Pacing ever so slowly

Found love overflowing

In all things lowly

In dream

Yellow flies the time

 Yellow fly’s the time

Johnclarestokes 

There were long hours spent on the porch

Tin roof shading from the Florida sun 

The silence interrupted by the wire swatter

From beneath in sand the ants would come

Carrying below the high porch the silent

ones who moments before sucked blood

The itching persisting into the evening

As the moths circled around the bare

yellow bulb swaying to the rocking

Mosquitoes waking for the evening shift

The fly swatter of little use to defend

bare flesh from the incessant assaults 

‘til we’d have to retreat to the front room

the high tongue and groove ceiling above 

with the long wire white bulb extinguished 

to sleep as the cicadas from sand emerge

to sing the song long into the nocturne 

the song of how yellow flies the time

no amount of swat the sting assuage 

ever more from Florida sands to swarm.

The departing

The departing

John Stokes

In the realm of the kingdom

The departing

A separation

Of spirit and flesh

Lone canoeists

Departing

At our given intervals

Some through Shoals

Too soon to Succumb 

Some to Gulfs

Long journey making

Great clouds of

Boatmen gathering

Rejoining of

Flesh and Spirit

Welcoming the

Ever homecoming of

the canoeists

4th heaven

 4th heaven

Lately the angels were lagging

In their guardian duties

And this displeased the Lord truly

To the 4th heaven His laggards sending

For today a new teacher has arrived

Experienced already in angelic duties

And to boot she’s quite the beauty

As the remedial angels sighed

Now class stand and pledge allegiance 

Hand over heart and wings straight

And thus began the whipping in shape

The new teacher and her host of students

Soon it came time for mid eternity exams

These once lagging guardians beamed

As all passed with hundreds times hundreds

Not a finer angelic teacher was ever found

But the angels were saddened somewhat 

Though now promoted to the fifth heaven

Word was it wasn’t such the blessing

As with this new teacher of 4th heaven Summers.

My mother, Clara Jean Orander Stokes would have been 92 today. She taught 4th grade mostly. 

Here shown in Wilmore Elementary, Kentucky.

Anthem Ascending

Anthem Ascending

john clare stokes 

End of fair faded fall

Down the stem the leaf wends

Who can hear the distant call?

Sweet refrain above the din.

Gently to sweet home ascending 

Sounds afar drawing ever close

In the dim awaits the friend

Life’s tears He so knows 

From clays abode she breaks

The leaf grows evergreen again

Eyes open and seen faith she takes

Ne’er more the limbs to bend.

Arise! Arise! My talitha today!

Upon the low skid chariot ride

Enter now this your eternal birthday

With Christ on the pinnacle abide!

Wake

Wake

John Clare Stokes

Tonight I sit up

With a dying moon

Soon to slip beneath

Tree sheets

Alone

I mourn

And then it occurs

I am the one

Soon to slip beneath

The forever sleeps

The moon

Mourns

For me

The mends

The longer grew our memory of home, the greater the boards, brick and tin took on a perfect mend. The December air in the slits, once as a siren, now but a gentle wind. The November smoke from the chimney, once billowing the black soot, now but a lazy waft upward, the April rain pelting awake upon the leaking tin, now a lullaby in our tender sleep. The front porch the only relief from the July heat, now a siesta in the creaking swing.

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.