Journey with John Stokes

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

The rocks smile

He who is without smile, let him cast the first frown.

Ava from back when even the rocks smiled out.

The cold

How exactly good it is

to know myself

in the solitude of winter,

my body containing its own

warmth, divided from all

by the cold, and to go

separate and sure

among the trees cleanly

divided, thinking of you

perfect too in your solitude,

your life withdrawn into

your own keeping

-to be clear, poised

in perfect self-suspension

toward you, as though frozen.

And having known fully the

goodness of that, it will be

good also to melt.

Wendell Berry

Go take a hike

My life has loosely been

Defined

By going to take a hike

If it wasn’t along the

Suwannee at Bell Springs

It was often

Telling someone to

Go take a hike

Ashes,ashes

We all fall down

John Clare Stokes

Ashes ashes we go round

Merry the circling spin

Joyful the lads sound

Pockets full of posey’s

Oh how the lasses grin

The blush of cheeks rosy

Breathless they all exclaim

Let it never end

Swift this ageless game

Youthful exuberance gone

Spent the wheezing bend

Slowing the frail hobble on

When to still silence all around

Well done my old friends

Ashes ashes we all fall down

Monday, December 1, 2025

Intervention photography

Intervening Poetry

by john clare

Can you take my life and make it a poem? he said,

lately everything has taken on new meaning

and I would rather you make sense of it instead

of a higher power coming down and intervening.

So I took a close look into his life and found

the reason why things were void of rhyme.

I took the quill and parchment to write it down,

trying not to be too vague or sublime.

It took several revisions before I was pleased

and presented it to him with nervous anticipation,

hoping his life now a poem would allow him to see

and appreciate the finer insights of inspiration.

It wasn't long before I received a call

and it was my friend all in a terrible confusion

that it wasn't what he expected at all

Where did you get the words you were using?

Such are the traps we enter when our friends

ask the poets to compose lines upon their lives

and the barbs stick and the bleeding begins

as if my pen was meant as a daggered knife.

So I took the eraser and began anew the lines

and wrote a simple nursery rhyme easy to

understand and certain not to offend this time,

but as a poet of lives I was through.

And on the wall framed for all to see

is the poem composed with mixed intention.

Each time it is read I cringe greatly

for you see, he really needed that intervention.

Day Sonnet

John Clare Stokes

Can one make his day into a sonnet?

See in pines the mimicking of the clouds?

Board a school bus with no students upon it?

Spot a cyclist behind a sign shrouded?

I tried while beginning upon a rosy path

In the distance another to set out in search of

Another in pink pushed past the laundromat

As another broken down sought help above.

My way seemed as upon a half horse road

Riff with the proverbial fowl crossing me up

A field to infinity to carry my tortured load

Leaping limbs impaling me in mid jump.

As the last Bud truck headed for the coast

Even the temple seemed a haven of dopes

Beside me at the light one daydreamed mindlessly

Behind me another simply crossed illegally.

Deliver me from this Babel of sonnet

Mesech

Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar! Psalm 120:5

Recently the fellowship experienced an upheaval, a shift in the leadership. What had been a dwelling in Zion, now seemed a Mesech. And so the harps were hung upon the willows and there was a longing for the Ivory Palaces. And so there is a striking out in the wilderness, in search. Little do we realize the futility, for the fire by night did not move, but we did.