Daddy’s little princess

 Daddy’s little princess 

They tell of the doting over her

In hall closets hanging

The lace and crinoline 

Forever to daddy

The little princess reigning.

Shell coat

 In the hand me down 

Hunters coat the father

Gave the son who gave

The son

With the 4-10 gun the

Father gave the son

Who gave the son

The trio set out in the

Cold Wakulla morning

The son following the

Son and the father

Quietly looking for any 

Sign or sound of game

Even then recording the scene

For the son knew this

Would never come again

And he wanted something

To remember the time.

Annette

Annette 

Annette of Sopchoppy

I was too young for my sisters party

But today Annette

I'm old enough to attend

But the home is gone

Even George Trice 

I think has died

And can't attend.

Redeemer

 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

 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

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

 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.

The waves overcome

 The waves overcome

And my bend is to run

But I turn 

And face them

Just to know the punch

Of a power beyond

Comprehension

The dream was real

The dream was real

Real as it could get

I woke in the same scent

Ascending to the stars

You somewhere afar.