Watertown Lake
In the me first kayak world we live in, I still prefer the canoe. While it lends itself to solo, it easily accommodates a friend. It’s ease of entry is appreciated. It’s ability to carry camera gear especially.
My dream rig would be a lightweight Kevlar wee lassie design.
Johnclarestokes
Blame not the scorching wind
It thought its breeze was soothing.
Blame not the burning sun
It thought its beams were warming.
Blame not the frost of morning
It thought its blanket was cooling.
Blame not the waters drowning
It thought its depths a baptism
Blame not the sand that grinds
It thought its grains a boy's mine.
Blame not the rains that flood
It thought its drops crops loved
Blame not the ones who hide
They thought from love they could abide.
Blame not Cline Feagles foggy mist
It thought the photographer loved it.
John Clare Stokes
In the sojourn here
The traipsing through
Those trampling down
In search of a city
There will be some
Fantastic scenery
Amazing places
You will even
Possibly for a time
Take your eyes from
The search
Thinking
It's not worth the
Looking
Here is enough
Beauty
But take it upon faith
Believe me
It's better than
Even poetry.
One last post before moving on. As my sister and I sat in the VA Hospice with hymns playing and our father in a coma nearing eternity, suddenly he rose his head and with open eyes in amazed wonder, stared out the window with light streaming in, then with last breath, entered forever.
I wrote the poem a few minutes later.
I know not who you were
Who meandered my way
My direction straight on
Yours the snaking along
Beware the pastor pulpit
Committee
Who sift through many, many
To choose one who will
Come to your fair city
With eyes bigger than reality
And say, we must erect a tabernacle
That will spire to heaven
Convincing all but two men
To go along with the dream
And so they begin their building
Selling their prime location
And all the yes men then abandon
Leaving the tabernacle without a spire
And then the man the pulpit committee chose
Tires
And leaves for a home garage
Meanwhile the prime property becomes
An O Reilly’s
And the pastor is long gone somewhere
Out in West Flardy.
Beware the pastor pulpit committee
lest you end up with an O Reilly.
John Clare Stokes
Where has our little Lute gone today?
His dego hoe leans unworked against the magnolia
The family cow swishes the flies
Waiting her milking
Mother hen broods upon her ungathered clutch.
Back broken down the furlough in the heat
Curt leans into the scots plough
Molly mule determined to pull home
Tempers steeled and growing hotter.
Over in the back forty cotton field
Marzelle mends again the broken barbs
Muscles straining refusing to yield
To wires snapping in times so hard.
Beneath the cool porch Irene and Hazel pray
Their Kitty Kat congregation captured near
All awaiting from above a word sent their way
Pass the plate! Your Maker fear!
Across the black top thirty-one at the store
Earnest hears the Trailways from Meridian
Too soon to send his sons to wars distant shores
Homewood! Homewood, the driver calls to
Passengers sleeping.
To the Shongelo shade Lute has roamed
So far from his dear mothers call
In the cool woods soon the light is gone
The clock stops down in the darkened hall
When clearly, Lute hears the call of longed for voices
The Shongelo shadows lift, gone for good
Returned safe, Luther Ray, in a loving embrace of
Ethel Marie, the family welcomes him home to the eternal Homewood.
Rev Luther Ray “Lute” Stokes
Oct 16, 1924
Mar 11, 2011
Moments before I was to play a hymn on my harmonica at our father’s funeral out at the entrance of Orange Hill Cemetery in Williston, I did not know what I would play. It was then out Pastor Wes Smith said that daddy once told him what his favorite hymn was. Grace, Grace Gods Grace. I thanked God and Wes for answering and proceeded to play it unpracticed.
You would have thought I’d have known for many a day we spent humming hymns, listening to him out- singing the choirs, but so much we didn’t talk about as we went about our various tasks of planting, pruning, making syrup, fishing, hunting and on.
We as a family miss greatly to this day the little runt of the family from Homewood, Mississippi who was larger than life
Some tools just fit
just right in the hand
Not always at first
But after years of breaking in
Today I pruned the briars
From the fence
Not so much out of
it needed it
But simply for the feel of it
He knew just how and when
To prune
It was the essential part
Of the latter growth
Taking the plant
back to its essence
In these hands
It’s more the butcher
Cutting with abandon
Jeopardizing future beauty
But in his hands
Every cut as from above.
