Journey with John Stokes

Friday, June 19, 2026

Redeemer

Johnclarestokes

Moccasin slid silently along beside

limpid-eyed hare struck a frozen pose

lanky-legged raccoon hastened stride

from this foe they so know.

Came a man laden down

in shadow the slithering snake

blood of Cain crying from the ground

on his calf the fangs did partake.

Hare on the lush green grass fed

Raccoon washed his meal that night

for the man, taking the poison bled

as Moccasin recoiled at the bitter bite.

In the darkness dwells a man slayer

his sting of death for all meant

the creatures marvel this redeemer

man with the potion heavenly sent.

O Heli

John Clare Stokes

What was it like

To be a Pappa?

Did Mary let you

Often hold Him?

Did you take Him

For walks along

The Galilee shores?

That time He was

Left at the Temple

Did you get onto

Joseph?

Did He cry the last

Time you saw Him?

Did He ask to stay

Awhile longer with

Pappa Heli?

I know it must have

Broke your heart

To lose Him so early

At just thirty-three.

Luke 3:23

I often speculate upon Heli, Joseph’s father, Jesus grandfather, and if he had any part in Jesus life.

Holding Nathaniel , my grandson, for the first time at Lake Shore Hospital.

To mend

To mend the broken things

John Clare Stokes

When before I turned ten in Sopchoppy, I took the John Wesley bust from the shelf in my fathers parsonage office and began to dance around the house with him. I think my sister may have been dancing with the other, Charles, but needless to say, I dropped John, breaking him in many pieces.

I do not recall getting a whipping, I’m sure I did, but I do recall my father meticulously glueing back Wesley, until you could hardly tell he took a fall.

And so the Wesley’s went with us through the years unscathed upon the various shelves, to finally dwell in our Lake City home.

And so this Fathers Day morning, I found myself in the back shed, attempting to mend an old rake long broken. Among the old tools, there was much contemplating upon my father and his passing along to me that desire to restore, to mend, to up purpose as a friend likes to share.

And then there is that same desire my father had as a Pastor to mend, to restore to want lives of loved ones to find their up purpose.

Will the old rake work? Will Wesley find a shelf when I’m gone? Will a son find home? Until then, I mend.

In the mists

Cline Feagle Road

Up ahead in the mists

Goes one to this day missed

Thursday, June 18, 2026

The hurdle race

"He had started going to parties again, but without the hurdle race to run, the parties of his friends and neighbors seemed to him interminable and stale. He listened to their dirty jokes with an irritability that was hard for him to conceal. Even their countenances discouraged him, and, slumped in a chair, he would regard their skin and their teeth narrowly, as if he were himself a much younger man." from John Cheever's short story, O Youth and Beauty!

Lady Isabella

by john clare

She lures me to her tamed embrace

Pungent aromas wafting over once wild ways

Civility feigned in her tolerance of the Muscovy

Far cries from the gathering of the Timucuan

Dugouts arriving to her unsettled banks

Drunk upon the black emetic around ceremonial

fires circling to face General Gaines invading warriors.

Ever so often a shaft hurls from the sky

As another fledgling Muscovy flies

Not from its own will

But in the clutch of the sreaming talons uncivil

Lady Isabella politely bows and nods

Pleased with the appeasing of her God.

Tears of gray

Tears of Gray Upon first seeing where pappy lay, It was too overwhelming, The lineage of the Blue and the Gray, Blue and Gray blood and tears always mingling. This photograph is of James Rourks, Attendandt to Col.Bowman of the Department of the Gulf at the Olustee Battle. Rourks saw for the first time his grandfathers grave, Irving Cason from WW1 and was overcome. It took an honorable mention at the West Library Show last evening.