Low the lake

 Low the lake

We were on our way from forty-nine...upon the intersection of Low Lake and Bulb Farm roads...the old Spanish style church was still standing....eventually crossing US90 and going into Wellborn...stopping at the Jiffy Store for the drink and ice cream...Roger would catch up on his girls....he knew all the clerks.....Bob and I would lag behind...Roger kept an up tempo pace on the Vitus....I had the yellow Cannondale...Bob the Super Sport Schwinn....we finished up at Bob's no A/C trailer off Turner Road in Lake City...it was a typical Sunday afternoon ride of over forty-nine miles to forty-nine and back....Roger like the church no longer stands…the  Jiffy now closed and the girls gone...Bob... was lost in a world of fading memory...making it to age ninety…..mostly spending  his last days reminiscing...along with me at near seventy and rapidly  keeping their pace....

None the sun

 None the sun

Johnclarestokes 

Saturday we counted

As a day of a peaceable existence 

Earnest and his hens

Conway and his hens

Free ranging without fighting

Though our gridiron teams lost

and Melanie fell and hurt her foot

she still made us pancakes and bacon

Roscoe and I spent time at Watertown

with Kevin and Marion

both fishing as squirrel arrived

to talk of magnet fishing

the anhinga and cormorant catching 

while three eagles were spotted

without Bill Chandler whom we missed

and a pond slider scared Roscoe

off the dock

after filling up with gas and kitty litter

bought for Mel

my sister came by for me to 

draw and cut out some big scissors

from cardboard for Halloween 

then all the chickens sans two

who roost in the trees

were led in the pen I spent time

rearranging 

in hopes they decide eggs

to lay on the next sunny day.

Midterm

Mid Term 

Johnclarestokes 

Come ye Triumphant sons

Our homeland burns

The blue invader comes

For kingdom come we yearn.

Cotton Field 

Providence

Old Kentucky

 Old Kentucky

John Clare Stokes

Let me return just once more

to the old Kentucky I’ve longed for

so long, the place of my first dreams

the Jessamine streams and woods

of fall, where we would walk in search

of the rabbits hidden by the slate fences

where we’d sit and rest for a spell 

as the long whistle from the coal train

strained the cool air to make it over

the High Bridge into the pristine white

fenced thoroughbred farms where the

Chestnut steeds reposed in lush retirement 

while all about the countryside on every barn 

wall and driveway, backboards were kept

in top condition, nets unfrayed and white

as into the night, the sounds of swish was

heard, a ritual repeated all across the 

commonwealth, the hope in every boy

to be among the number with ole Rupp

and his runts on the hallowed hardwood. 

Let me return just once more.

Whence the pew

 Whence the row

John Clare Stokes

Do you recall who it was who

Sat upon row one

I do

Do you recall who it was who

Sat upon row two

I do

Do you recall who it was who

Sat upon row three

I do 

Do they recall who it was who

Sat upon row four

I do

It was me

Half past Cheely

 Half past Cheely 

John Clare Stokes

Once there was a time upon which you could set your watch in Williston

When Nettie Griffin and later NE would arrive at the Chick Inn

When one of Charlie Lewis angels would be at the dry goods

Mrs Valerie Blackburn would begin painting with her pet mockingbird 

Travis Harris would pump some Standard premium for Chubby Pettaway

Doyle Crosby and Rossi Davis would arrive to repair the tube TV

Bruce Smith would grab his racquet from Crabtree’s and head up Noble

When the Seaboard would sound to slow the traffic down

When JH would come walking all about town.

It was time to…

Washed up

 Washed up

John Clare Stokes

Sometime in the moonless night

They washed up

High tide bringing them in

Deposited beside

Yesterday’s sand castle

Now more a little mountain

range in resemblance 

In the morning dawning

They seemed just sunning

but the dog knew better

The fiddler crab too

We could only surmise 

Rip tides

Castaways

Lovers

It’s the mystery of the sea

They looked so happy.

Buck fever

 two bucks worth

Fortunate I was to spot these two bucks lounging in the shade. Fortunate they were I only had camera in tow. I have for the record, though being a hunter of bucks in my teens, never killed one. After many years of therapy in the Betty White-tail Clinic,  I was finally cured of Buck Fever.

Merrily down the stream

 By paddle

By Evinrude

By saddle

By tube

We journey

Merrily

In dream

 In dream

by john clare

I cannot escape this stream

forever taking me further

down in the strong current

toward an open gulf 

depositing me to bob

in a tide of the moons clutch

this dream of making it

upstream just once

past the Dottie tupelo

we once measured 

exclaiming it was a record

tree way up here alone

on this upper Suwannee

sending her jams down

to sweeten the journey

jars upon jars of the 

spread upon the sands

to sustain those journey

struck longing to return

 to their Dottie tree.

Harlot Route

 Harlot Rout

Must the Harlots always win

Taking at will the fatted men

Making no distinction

Of age or ability 

To function

Just taking the money

Without compunction 

Must the harlots always win

Grinning from the screen

In unseen dens of home

Alluring the gawking in

Giving in to the sin

Must the Harlots always win

Taking all the men

Leaving them but shells

Of guilty Deacons 

Seeking victory over

The overwhelming odds

With God their conquerer 

Kicked to the curb.

Kentucky

 On the old Harrodsburg pike 

Coming out from Lexington into the pastures of

thoroughbred chestnut Churchill Downs dreamers

grazing, the Scotch Irish stonemason hewn fences snaking by Jessamine stream and rabbit trail beneath the bared mulberry and oak

trees of October, a welcome chill in the air, and it was good

to once again to be in search of those so missed in my old

Kentucky home.