My buddy

 My Junior year in high school I wanted to be a SCUBA diver. I traveled to Ocala from Williston once a week to the NASDS school on Silver Springs Blvd for lessons. First few weeks were spent in class. Later we went to a local hotels pool for putting our book knowledge to reality. We paired up to learn the buddy system. I was paired with a lady that seemed to excel in class.

First lesson in the pool was clearing the mask and then buddy breathing. I took a breath of air and handed the regulator to my buddy. She would not give it back. She panicked in a pool. I had to surface. Nevertheless the classes smartest failed and dropped out.

I went on to pass my open water test at Royal Springs and got my dive card.

This scubapro fin is all that remains of my dive gear from the Hal Watts diving school.

Choose your buddy wisely.

Date night

 Date Night

Blind John Magoo

I try not post syrupy lubby dubby stuff. I’ve deleted several lubby dubby couples over the years infatuated with their trophy wife or masculine male. I try to be sensitive to those who do not have lubby dubby relationships and how it also makes them go like me, yuk, get a room you two. Oh, just Ignore those two Nikons on the love seat.

The journey

 The journey

John Clare Stokes

Again we ponder our

Diminishing return

To the present

We ponder in 

Toned down wonder

How the past

Came to this

Is it any wonder

When we ponder

The future is 

Possible

Seaboard Coastline Station

Orlando

The upper room

 The upper room

John Clare Stokes

Everyone should have an upstairs view

In my life I’ve had three

For hours I’d sit as below the world by me passed

How I wish the upper room would last.

Grandmas leg

 Grandma’s leg

John Clare Stokes

I don’t know why mamma would do it

But she would send me to spend the night

at Mrs Porters across the street by the Sopchoppy river.

 Mrs. Willie Mae had an older son named Tommy

and he’d like to scare me

especially by showing me grandma’s wooden

leg in the corner closet

and he’d tell me how grandma would come

in the late of night in search of

her wooden leg

And the cold wind would moan through the

Cracks in the floor

And the closet door would creak

And Lura Elena would come close to me in her bed, 

With a finger to her lips saying, shish,

Quiet now. Don’t be afraid. 

Have you seen my wooden leg?

Slumbering Suwannee

 Suwannee still

This time of season when Suwannee

is slumbering from the ardent 

Springs roiling, she lets me draw near

without fear of her taking me on

her rapid journey to the Gulf.

hauling glASS

 Dragging glASS

In 2018 I went out for a test hike along the dikes of Alligator Lake. Lugged the d3300 on the 200-500 with the monopod, the D3500 on the 18-55. The GoPro hero and the iPhone. Had to stop every so often to rest. Woefully out of shape. Why does the glass to get you near have to be so heavy! 

Lost in a fog

 Lost in a foggy

Roscoe and the photographer waited patiently upon the worn out dock, the fog too thick for clarity, watching the hawk and eagle perched, waiting us out.

The City crew arrived and stood around talking fishing, trash all about. Not their job. The grizzled old prick arrived in hopes of a morning rendezvous.

Don’t the predators ever tire? 

The man in the boat worth the photographers home arrived to soon rock the dock with the too large wake. Roscoe ran for dry ground.

It was determined today the fog would prevail. The pain in the arm from the fall heightened by the damp mist. It pained the photographer to lift the heavy Nikon.

The geezer and the not my job work crew soon left so we loaded up and left too.

I’m sure soon thereafter the hawk and eagle flew.

They always do.

Screen Time

 Screen Call

John Clare Stokes

Sunday nights we would sit out

on the porch listening to the 

drums of New Mt Zion church, thinking

it sounded as the Waziri in the 

Tarzan movie and we would 

shiver in the Sopchoppy heat. 

Eventually the tribe would 

disperse, and mamma  would

tuck us in early for school day.

We were timid to venture the

next afternoon across the field

in the direction of Zion, fearing 

there we hungry cannibals lurking.

We never ventured too far from the  earshot of the back porch, where we 

knew when time came, mamma

would call us home, safe from

the drumming of New Mt Zion, 

ever waiting to carry us beyond

the call of mamma and the back porch.

Frog Man

 My Junior year in high school I wanted to be a SCUBA diver. I traveled to Ocala from Williston once a week to the NASDS school on Silver Springs Blvd for lessons. First few weeks were spent in class. Later we went to a local hotels pool for putting our book knowledge to reality. We paired up to learn the buddy system. I was paired with a lady that seemed to excel in class.

First lesson in the pool was clearing the mask and then buddy breathing. I took a breath of air and handed the regulator to my buddy. She would not give it back. She panicked in a pool. I had to surface. Nevertheless the classes smartest failed and dropped out.

I went on to pass my open water test at Royal Springs and got my dive card.

This scubapro fin is all that remains of my dive gear from the Hal Watts diving school.

Pick your buddy wisely. 

Bellville

 Bellville Bridge over the Withlacoochee River.

It is late as you are about to enter Florida heading South on I-75 from Lowndes County. The concrete clunk, clunk, clunk of Georgia is hypnotic, looming ahead an exit. The only sign you  see announcing this unincorporated town, the last exit before Florida. Exit 401, Lake Park Bellville Road. You tell your slumbering companion, lets get off this infernal concrete and travel down to have a look. You are about to enter the Twilight Zone.

Real

 REAL.

Emily Dickinson

I like a look of agony,

   Because I know it's true;

Men do not sham convulsion,

   Nor simulate a throe.

The eyes glaze once, and 

that is death.

   Impossible to feign

The beads upon the forehead

   By homely anguish strung.

Gar Glare

Photo by John Stokes

Alligator Lake