JohnClare Stokes
Told my shadow
I am going swimming
If I do not surface
You are on your own
After about two minutes
He began worrying
Coaxing me to surface
After three minutes
He was in a panic
But all he could do
Was watch as I stayed
Beneath
Refusing to join me
Choosing rather the
Coming evening
Night to take him.
We hear of mysterious things, how come the gloam, the Magnolia take wing, and memory flies to long gone home.
There are those
In love with woes
No matter the grace
Find it a miserable place.
The ability to raise words from the dead
The ones never read
Flee from this country
You bearer of lost words
Go to the restless swine herds
The Gadarene he rattles
Chains hold him to the tombs
Come poet, there is room.
Rusty latches to unloose
Spikenard to pour on the scar
Memorial of the poet from afar.
There is a palm
At Oak Lawn
Separating Lilly and James
The palm stronger than stone
Pushing their graves apart
There was the time
Rev. Eubanks stood as that palm
Separating at Hopewell
The hearts of stone
From the hearts of flesh
In my verse, I told of the palm. This is the palm I spoke of. Rev.Eubanks was the founder of the Hopewell Primitive Baptist Church in Northern Columbia County,Florida off Road 6. Rev. Eubanks and his wife are buried in Lake City at the downtown Oaklawn Cemetery Northwest of the Confederate graves.
It seems we dwell in primary
Of red, blue, yellow
It's fine for most fellows
It's the pathway to tertiary.
John Clare Stokes
Ground itch
Is both a symptom
And condition
Our flesh reacts
To grass
We are allergic to
Grass
And yet we are
Drawn to it
The world of grass
We do not want
To leave
As grass
It is our being
It takes a supernatural
Burn of the grass
To sooth the itch
To direct our love
Beyond the lawn
That day in the bow
You paddled through
The low
Lying limbs stirring
The paper wasps
To swarm all around
Him as he passed
In the stern
I was watching him
Fighting
Swatting
Diving in
I was inwardly
Laughing
At your unknown
Plot of his misery
Today
I had compassion
On a paper wasp
Who was drowning
In the pool
Certain he would
Show gratitude
For my rescuing him
He stung me
In my misery
Without mercy
The grassy recipients
Gathered round the
Precious liquid:
Drink this,
In remembrance
Of He who
Freely gives
The rain
To sustain
A wind blown Magnolia petal filled with the recent rain.
Now remember what we told you, if he gets fresh, offer him a glass of Iced Roundup....
JohnClare Stokes
I know that dwelling beneath
The ground, are the thriving,
Bustling silent towns,
The grist mill grinding up
The corn, the calves upon
The hill being born,
Brick makers firing up
The kilns, the black smiths
Pounding on the steel
The one law in the town
To keep silent
For Indians are seeking
The hidden silver
DeSoto's are ever digging
For the hidden gold
Keep the secret
Of your borders
Worship quietly you
Saturday Adventist
Be as the Methodists
Stoic and silently staid
Not giving away
The place where the
Seminole would wade
To raid the offering made
To silence the shaped note
Song
From lips of those
Told o'er and o'er
Keep silent
Keep still
Until they pass beyond
The ever grinding mill.
