Siren

 Siren of Suwannee

Myriads of eyes has she

Alluring with her palmetto lashes

Her makeup never clashing

Oh that maiden Suwannee!

Yashica

 I got a Yashica camera 

It didn’t have the ring that Nikon had, but it was the first camera I purchased in 1971 from my Science teacher, Emile Santiestiban, for $25. That would be $162 2020 dollars. It was an all manual with no meter Single Lens Reflex with a 135mm screw mount lens and an external Sekonic light meter. 

Emile helped me load the black and white Tri-X film and later how to print and develop in the darkroom. 

Up until getting the camera, I was inspired by Linda Levy and Sonja Shore Griffin in art class. I am sure it was through them and the annual staff I was drawn to photography. 

For my senior year, with the graduation money I received, I went to Harmon’s in Gainesville on University Avenue and decided upon a Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic. It had a 55mm lens and a built in match needle meter. I didn’t have a darkroom and what film I shot, I sent to Sunshine Drugs and Kodak for developing. With the Spotmatic I added several lenses and used it up until the early 1980’s, when I bought a Nikon FM2 with a 35mm 1.8. I later added a 100mm macro, 180 2.8, 80-200, 500 mirror, FE, F3, motor drive, etc. it was my desire to be a photojournalist and work for a newspaper. I almost made it, working for a time for the Lake City Reporter. 

In the early 2000’s I purchased my first digital camera, the Nikon d40 which I still use at 6mp, but with a 500 flash sync speed.

Seems I’ve had nearly all the consumer digital cameras Nikon came out with, my current being the D850 full frame and the D7500 crop frame.

Today I am still bent toward the telephoto end as in the beginning, using mainly a 200-500 and 70-300 lens. 

As I grow older, the heavy camera and lens becomes more a burden.  At times I think of selling and going light, but I hesitate for I get attached to the old gear. I wouldn’t want anyone trading me in for a lithe model. Would you?

Think on

 Think on these things

Before we apply our

Beautiful and move on

Think for a moment

Why beautiful?

Beautiful implies a standard.

A judgement. A choice.

A perception 

A feeling

Whence? 

Why beautiful?

Who gave this ability to

Know beauty from what?

Why, not beautiful?

Appreciate your ability

to apply beautiful. 

Don’t take it lightly.

Tried to align

 Tried to align

John Clare Stokes

The memory of the entering

The cool steps remaining

Offering a higher view

Peering straight through

From the top step

I could see clearly

Nothing at all had changed

Oh some now grown trees

Had rearranged the living

Space

But it was all in place

I stepped down

And quietly left them

Alone.

With a view

Pa must of been the last

To have the view

After he was gone

The porch had no reason

For holding on

So it too went with Pa.

Basketball John

 Basketball John

John Clare Stokes

It was probably instilled in the few months I lived in Vicco, Kentucky after being born in January of 1955 during basketball season before moving to Sopchoppy, Florida in June. It wasn’t a particularly great season by Kentucky standards for Adolph Rupp’s Wildcats, finishing 20-6 and second in the SEC behind Alabama. 

But that’s not the point. Point is, it rubbed into me unknowingly. It dwelt there when we moved to Sopchoppy and the Yellow Jackets in the old native rock gym that is now a landmark. Though I wanted to be Walt Dickson, the all-conference running back, there was also inside, Walt the basketball player.

When we moved to Monticello in my third grade year, I do not know if I asked my father, or if he too had the passion, having been invited by Adolph Rupp to say the prayer for the boys before a game, but he erected a basketball backboard and goal with swoosh net behind the new parsonage. Though I took second in punt, pass and kick and wanted to paint the Redskin helmet I won green, after Green Bay, I began to spend most of my time shooting and less time punt,pass and kicking. I finally got my first opportunity to get on a real court in a real game when the 4th grade A boys took on the 4th grade B team during halftime of a Tiger basketball game. My best friend Marc Bishop, the superintendent’s son and I led the B squad against the talented Butch and Bobby Plaines twins  of the A team. The game was frenetic, in the end we lost 7to5. I was high scorer with 3, making my first free throw. Marc had 2. 

That year we moved to Wilmore, Kentucky where my father and mother attended Asbury College. Daddy was to be the alumni director under ZT Johnson, the President and life long family friend.

It was here, as a Cub, with my two new best friends, Stuart and Steve Smith, whose dad was a science professor and coach, we had free rein of the Asbury gym. Steve would go on to be the legendary coach of Mouth of Wilson Prep school. It was here, just a few miles from Mecca Lexington, that my Uncles William and Billy, living with us in the apartment out back, took me to my first and only Kentucky basketball game in Memorial Coliseum , where their friend Chuck Wade from their home in Forest, Mississippi beat Louie Dampier and Pat Riley. We got to go down to the State locker room and meet Chuck, still living in Forest. #My Uncle William hoped it would cement me a State fan. It only solidified my blue colors. 

In 1967 we moved back to Florida after two years, to Williston. Those first years in 7th to 9th grade, the passion was at a zenith. Orville Wheeler, my coach, being equally passionate, from Jerry West Virginia, was inspiring and encouraging. For a white boy, the future was bright. Then something happened. The Mighty White Red Devils played an exhibition game with East Williston, then all black, a year before segregation. I should have redirected  the passion playing on another field, but I was color blind. 

Like my days as a sprinter came to an end, taking up the hurdles, I should have seen my days as a basketball player ending. As all my white friends one by one quit, I ended up the only white player. Where I was once a shooting guard, I was now a point guard like the current Reed Sheppard who could get the ball up court past any press, only to pass it off. We never won many games. The team was too concerned with scoring stats. I was Mr Defense. 

Once a friend of my mother, trying to impress her, said, “I just love to watch your son play, now what number is he?”

My fondest years of basketball came from playing on our all white Masonic Demolay team where we were state runner ups. Likewise the many nights playing pickup games in the Williston gym with the great Kentucky meatcutter Bill Boyd, my former JV coach the great Dean Chesser, Truby English and other former players. In my senior year, I gave up track and football, which I loved, to concentrate on basketball. Even though I got the Mr Basketball award at graduation, on hindsight, the day I saw that East Williston team with Wilson James dunking and giving meaning to white boys can’t jump, I too should have taken a enjoy football and track too attitude, for it was the end of the line for a lifetime. That’s why tonight I’ll watch UK play South Carolina, but I’m not going to worry near as much as once I would have if they lose. 

And to conclude, I still have that goal daddy set up for me in 1964. Times I go out to the shed where it hangs to see if it still glows a hot orange.

Inane

IN•ANE

Why do I find it

inane to think

from stars we

came?

Why do I find it

hard to explain

from dust we

came?

Why do I find such

pain the grain

of a universe 

in my shoe?

I am Sandhill

 I am Sandhill

John Clare Stokes

I am not Ibis

I shall not dwell below

I shall rise

I shall circle

I shall join 

For I am Sandhill

I am not Ibis

I identify with sky

With migration

With the call northward 

I am Sandhill

I am of the called

I am not Ibis

Song of a man

 Song of a Man Who has Come Through

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!

A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.

If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!

If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!

If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed

By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through

the chaos

of the world

Like a fine, exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;

If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge

Driven by invisible blows,

The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder,

we shall find the

Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,

I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,

Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?

What is the knocking at the door in the night?

It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.

Admit them, admit them.

DH Lawrence 

One goes through

John Clare Stokes

LOL

 There were places

the route would take

There were places

a home I could make

There were places

Such as little Orange Lake

There are routes

Someday

I will retrace.

Mossy Mary

 She liked to have her head in moss

At night she fitfully tossed

We thought it was her mares

Find out it was chiggers in her hair.

Within

 What voice was it within the wind

that told you now is the time to begin?

Were they whispers ever so near

or shouts that rang within your ears?

And as you circled and stalled,

were you counting the number called,

looking upon me longing below,

waiting for me with you to go?

Water vows

 Water Vows

john clare 

Today the water heater rusted out

Flowing through the nice pink 

rooms with abandon piped up

all these twenty-six years 

the blame falling squarely on

the groom for don't you recall

when you made your vows

that you promised for better

or worse not to let the hot water

loose?