Swing high

 Swing High

by Johnclarestokes 

To the skies above with the

hawks I swing

Below my bare feet brush the

sand and stings.

Pumping hard to reach above the

dogwood blooms

Each passing arc nearer and

nearer to blue I zoom.

And as the butterfly fusses

and flits

The locust looks and his

tobacco spits

Bees buzz and struggle under

their pollen load

Dragonflies swoop and taunt

the patient toad.

I swing in ever widening circles

The blues, the golds, the browns

all one swirl

and I leap

and I am but a speck

way above the cloudy world.

I am a hawk.

Stetson man

 

Palmetto halo

 A palmetto halo

John Clare Stokes

It’s about the only crown

This shadow of a man shall adorn

No goodness found

Of all self righteousness shorn

We men the earth born

in the darkness and shadow dwell

Can the fallen leaves ever adorn

The green of life before we fell?

Soar

 There are those called to fly

Before they ever take wing

In womb hear the Sandhill cry

Or feel the oceans roaring

There is a softer wind

There is a quieter song

There is a darkness fleeing

There is a coming home

Magic Brownie

 The boy and the magical Brownie

Each day the boy and his Brownie

would set out in wonderment 

to see what magical scenes unfolded

before them

and it wasn’t long

I’d say around seven frames

they’d find a cloud beckoning

to rest upon it for the next

Seven wonders to visit them.

Bert and Cora

 Burt and Cora

John Stokes

Last evening on public broadcasting network they replayed the documentary of Joe Hutto called, My time as a turkey, about his study of a clutch of turkey eggs he incubated, who imprinted on him. The experiment took place in 1991 in the Apalachicola National Forest, near the farm of Burt and Cora Roddenberry in the Mt Beeser Community. It was years earlier, in the early sixties, that on this Thanksgiving morning my father, the late Rev Luther Stokes and I went on a turkey hunt on Burts property by the Deep Branch. It was before the stores sold the butterballs, and when my dad beaded in with his old Parker 12 gauge double-barreled, we knew we would have wild turkey for dinner.

We spent many Sunday's at the Roddenberry's, our favorite time in November when many would gather for his annual cane syrup making. It was from "uncle Burt" that my father learned to make his own syrup, which too later became our tradition on his little farm in Crawfordville called Homewood, after his birthplace in Mississippi. We called our syrup "old Homewood". 

In this photo, which my father took, Cora oversees the making of a chicken wire fence around her roses, no doubt to keep the turkey out. My dad was conducting a revival at the Methodist Church he served in Sopchoppy from 1955-1962. His good friend, then President of Asbury College my father and mother attended in Kentucky, Dr Zachary Taylor "ZT" Johnson, is in the background. He was the evangelist. Kneeling with Burt was Lawrence George, his friend from Asbury too, who with his wife, led the singing.

My fathers new blue Dodge DeSoto, 

Bought on trade for the old Packard, is in the background.

Today we shall gather and I shall dwell long in those cold deep woods of Wakulla next to my father, then move on over and sit beside him as he stokes the old Homewood fires.

Lucille’s wheelbarrow

 Lucille’s wheelbarrow 

For years it rested in the cool sand beneath the old raised cracker home in Wakulla County, home of Lucille Towles, blind, later owned by my father, now me.

The wood now gone, all that remains is the metal wheel. 

Paradise

 She dreams of paradise 

I told her

Close your eyes

Click the heels twice

She opened her eyes

Said, why this isn't paradise

I said, my bad

''Tis mine.

Tell me the story

 Tell me the story

John Clare Stokes

Seems the further from the once sharply

defined scene

The more it blends into a dream

The lessons once written in plain 

black,white and red

Permeating skin, blood and bone

shaping within the Way herein we

so walk

no longer in the harsh light of law

but in soft beams of grace enveloping.

Corinth Methodist Church

Columbia County

Florida

Take Me

 Take me

John Clare Stokes

I stood knee deep in the outgoing tide

I said, take me, as it rushed out to sea

I stood arms outstretched in the wind

I said, take me, joyful in the lifting 

I stood upon the rivers edge

I said, take me, as to the gulf it ebbed

I stood in the stream so clear

I said, take me, past the wide eyed deer.

I stood amid the rising smoke,

I said, take me, as through rays it broke

I stood in the shadows growing long

I said, take me, before the light is gone

I stood within the rushing crowd

I said, take me, from clamor loud

I stood in the wide open field

I said, take me, to your bidding I yield

I stood in the Holy presence

I said, take me, and thus began romance.

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Thanksgiving