Bloody paw

 Bloody paw....late nights along Roline banks...from the murky does crawl...the worst of haints...the three pawed leviathan...hissing who took my paw...who took my paw....

Turn out the lights

 Some things I've learned

Jack O Lanterns are dark

When no candle burns

Family we think will never part

Halloween it full of trickery

Witches are often quite pretty

Candy dishes are eaten completely 

Before the first treater walks briskly 

Fall leaves even turn in summer 

Is it any wonder

Come the All Hallows' night

We turn out all the lights?

Downy boy

 Downy Boy

I think if I were with wings

I would not be affiliated

With the pileated 

His fiery, flamboyant red

His constant cackling

Nor the crow

A know it all

Nor the red-tail hawk

Again

Always having to squawk 

And I feign to diss

Their purpose

Their ways are just not for me

And I'd be hard pressed

To find a bird that's best

Perhaps the Downy

Not too showy 

Just a tad of red

Common and looks like a miniature hairy

Of which I am not

Often mistaken for a 

Sapsucker 

Who drill the parallel

Holes in living trees

To feed on sap that

Drips so gewey 

Or perhaps a turkey

But not a Jake or a Tom

Always looking for some

Oh, just little, quiet 

Downy!

Ogden Road Treatise

 Ogden Road treatise 

Seems I’d keep the Suwannee scene long

It was my favorite scene i said

And the poem was one particularly fond 

But neither inspired or led

To the heights I dreamed

It so seems I dwell in a land alone

Those tell me do not post these scenes

And so I do not seek the places drawn

The joy of inspiration it brings

They are tucked deep within the secret 

I shall not help the blind again see

They will just have to grope darkly.

We see darkly

 We live in what we deem

Sunlight bright

But it’s just the glare of night

We do not see clearly at all

We peer as through a veil

A glass of deepest hue

There is a certain kind of light

We perceive beyond the night

Faces close as can be pressed

For but a glimpse

A drawing near to

 the figure of one blessed

Who dwells within the light

Of His own eternal glory.

Thinking of 2009

 Passing the angel art on the fence yesterday, the poem from this day in 2009 immediately came to mind:

Sephiroth Sonnet

Dear Yahweh send an Uriel this night

From the southern heavens fly our way

From your Holy presence flaming light

Take our prayers to your heart we pray

On heavenly heights one mighty stands

With precious healing sent from our God

Grant us mercy to our outstretched hands

Bud anew upon this dry and withered rod 

Come Michael, O warrior of God grand

Smite this plague that thirsts to kill

Blood of the Lamb, cover this dark land

with celestial healing may lungs so fill

Come Gabriel, Come Michael, Uriel do sail

Oh Holy God, may your heavenly glory prevail!

One night stands

 One night stands

John Clare Stokes 

For one night we allowed ourselves 

to return to the field of play

bringing the ball up the court

for the brothers in red

Galloping down the field in

the loose fitting jersey 

Splitting wide in the homespun

Cheerleading uniform

Heading up the hill in the Charger

out to ghost light frights

Not daring to ask her out in our shyness

Taking a half century to muster courage 

But by then what does one do

when all the places to go are gone

even the very school and the home room

to return to on Monday 

Your friends anxiously waiting to ask

What did you do

How far did you go

And you lie and of course say

All the way to State.

Upon the 50th high school class reunion

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