Inner beauty
Once we gazed upon her beauty
All young and so sturdy
But with the seasons
Came the siding
Covering the lovely lines
It took years
As slowly the siding peeled
Revealing finally again
Her inner beauty.
Saturday, February 28, 2026
To direct a plane
To direct a plane
Last evening my pilot friend Greg Boyette graciously agreed to hold off his training flight until 8pm in order to help me capture the plane in the moon as it did repeat take off and landings. They passed to the right, to the left, above and below with me texting, calling and using my flashlight to try and achieve proper alignment. The last pass came just to the edge. Upon Leaving, I stopped at the end of the runway and was able to quickly capture them landing, so all was not a total wash.
A half stoked beats a no stoke.
Unstuck
Don’t stay stuck in a ratio
Every now and then
experiment
you never know
Your wonderment
Could me mistaken
For great talent
The poets burial
The poets burial
Johnclarestokes
Came upon the poets burial
Beneath the grand old oak
Beside the white painted church
No words heard spoken
How did we know a poet?
It must have been we observed
For poets are the lonely ones
buried beneath their bereaved words.
Color of blood
Color of blood
Johnclarestokes
It’s the way with artists
poets
the mystics among us
Pouring their heart out
thinking they have ruptured
the vein to seeing
when all that is said in the end,
Did you use
Cadmium red
or alizarin crimson
for the color of the blood?
Sulphur Scribes
Sulphur Scribes
John Clare Stokes
We were never the poets we thought, It's uncertain any words ever fell in place, With each using of one another went to waste, The discarded word then vainly sought. I sat beside a flower with my pen, What few words I knew I used, Carefully composing the words I chose, Like plucking choice gold leaves from fall winds. A cloudless sulphur lit and to her I rhymed, To me it was quite an event, It was beyond any word written, Poetical as Frost's best lines. Then the Cranes came upon the breeze, That sound from beyond time, In itself a gathering of Nature's rhyme, Each composing upon blue paper sky effortlessly. It was then an order became evident, I was freed from finding the rhyme, Of trying to compose within the lines, Before me rose a curtain un-rent. The scene I saw was of threaded light, We simply pull the needle slowly to see, Only the light flecks this side of the tapestry, Backing black yet necessary to see the other side wedding white. We are to give sound to the unheard, Not mere poets but translators and scribes, Preserving in word His light coursing ride, Touching you, me, sulphur,leaf, cloud, bee and bird.
Thursday, February 26, 2026
Two whitetail
Whitetail fusion
Until the two white-tail deer moved ever so slightly and separated, I thought for a moment I was seeing some mythical creature in the Osceola National Forest near the West Tower Campsite.
Paint me a Shrimp boat
Paint me a shrimp boat
Forever it seemed William was after me to paint him a shrimp boat scene. And so as a young teen I did and sent it to him. Roses father a master wood craftsman, made a frame. I never got to see it hung in prominence like the still life's did I painted for Grandma Bernice, who proudly hung them in her kitchen. The shrimp boat was finally taken from the mantle and relegated to the guest room floor. Grandma Boykins to the dumpster no doubt when her home was sold. And so many others sent out over the long past years, lost,relegated, the frames of more value than the work. I wish I could of said, like a Monet or Van Gogh, they would have made you wealthy as much as they certainly enriched my heart giving them.
A Grackle congregation
The grackle congregation
The service was particularly uplifting
All the high notes they were hitting
It was so heavenly soaring
Gulls came from afar inquiring.
Sand traps
Sand Traps
By john clare
You must forgive me as I am too easily ensnared by the past
Trapped by a boyhood some sixty years ago
I know I should avoid the circle of sand
Baited with Tonka trucks and other lures
But every time I step right in and soon I'm caught
Not kicking and screaming but blissful in the live trap
Gorging upon the surrounding steam shovels and bulldozers
With little desire for a catch and release to reality.
And is it any mystery we Pappa's build our own sand traps
Scatter about choice toy bait
In hope of luring over a grand one
From the no trespassing fences our own keep them in?
Keeping from the traps of sand they so want to
Be captured in.
Homewood
Gone the Home
This was the home place of my grandfather Stokes in Homewood, Mississippi. It was recently torn down in 2024. Of all the homes from my early days, the second parsonage in Monticello, my grandmother Oranders in Bluefield and Crumpler, West Virginia remain.
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