Sting

 Hummingbirds travail

The ever working ones in the yard 

Isn’t life for them trying enough

To contend with wasps rough

enough to put a sting quite hard

From rails to boat tails

From Rails to Boat tails 

Waiting for Magritte 

Johnclarestokes 

Does everything align to your reason?

Must there exist rational explanation for everything?

If I showed you a mystery we shall not all sleep

Would you lie awake nights your soul to keep?

The silver queen

 The Silver Queen

Johnclarestokes 

He would stop along the way to some humble 

abode and ask intently why no interest

Why she had land and horses and the best family

Are you just of another persuasion?

And she’d assure him not and pray just someway

to get away

For the evening was coming

When under the cover of darkness

to slip away and meet the Silver Queen

to lie in the watermelon fields and listen

as the coyotes and hounds called to her

The girl with the horses long since sleeping

dreaming of her coming preacher boy

but he never came 

For he too was under the spell of the 

Silver Queen

And it wasn’t until years later

The grandson came

But by then the old preacher 

Upon his dying bed

could only gaze into his eyes 

without a word

That’s the price one pays

to give his love to the Silver Queen

her gestation measured in years 

the grandson exiled to her island.

Yesterday

 Yesterday 

Johnclarestokes 

Four swallowtail 

Above me did sail

Above me did sail

Today

Three buzzards 

Above me did hover

Above me did hover

Tomorrow

Two cardinals 

Above me will discover

Above me will discover 

Forever

This man

Below them was a lover

Below them was a lover

Fathers of sons

 Fathers of sons

Wasn’t it a grand thing

When we’d gather in

the day with laughter

enough to chase all

cares away

Oh what a day

On the wings of

 On the wings of a Snow White kite

He sends His pure delight

With a sign from the height

On the wings of a kite.

Your limb

 I’m sitting watching the moon

I hear a cracking sound

A pine limb big enough to squish me

Falls within ten feet avoiding the vehicle

Don’t think tree limbs don’t have a

Master guiding them

So be prepared

Should the Master one day say

Limb, upon him.

River Narrows

 River Narrows  

 by John Clare Stokes  

  Okeefenokee paddle strokes  

Trembling under thwart 

 Bull Gators provoked  

Island hammock snorts 

 Black bear splashing 

 Paddle strokes increasing  

Into tannic crashing 

 Fear never ceasing  

Into River Narrows  

Suwannee's birth canal  

The silence grows  

 Then screams and howls  

 Conceived into flow  

 Eternal toward sea 

 New secrets unfold 

 Birthed from Okeefenokee

Bob Jones in Dougon on River Narrows

Ten Years After

 Ten Years After

Johnclarestokes 

Alvin Lee I would listen to

going home, to see my baby

I'd love to change the world

Everywhere freaks and fairies

We thought yesterday 

Back to two oh thirteen

and before that oh three

and on and on back the 

Ten years after

And how much happened

In the last Ten Years After

And wondered what could

Possibly happen in the next

Ten Years Coming.

Meme the reader

 I got the old photo of meme reading a Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan book as a girl, printed for Paula to give to Claire.

Old town life

 Old Town life

And what of this old life?

Waters paddled upon

Rivers crooked and long

Some we've been upon

Many, many a time

Others never to see

In our Old Town journey

To open a bed of worms

 To open a Bed of worms

In our Williston years, my father and I maintained a bed of worms, “the best you ever saw” said Bobby Sandlin who lived next door, the worm bed defining our property line. The bed was fed by the bantam chickens manure we raised in a pen my father made, by cow manure from the Elliot Whitehurst’s huge feedlots, and every scrap left from meals mamma made and the vegetables and leftovers from the garden beside the parsonage. 

And people would come and we’d dig for them a hundred wigglers for a dollar, an easy task for there were thousands in big clusters when you turned up the rich compost. 

When we moved from Williston to Lake City, like all our prior moves, daddy took a large quantity of worms to start a new bed. My father always maintained one where ever we lived, for he loved to fish. I don’t miss so much the digging, but I sure miss fishing with him in Pappy’s lake.