John Clare Stokes
Do you recall the exact time
You crossed the finish line
Stumbling forward to fall
spent in waiting arms
Not a world record
But your personal record
to be written in the diary
and recalled years later
Amazed at your prowess?
I do
With the long standing mile record broken recently, this is timely.
John Clare Stokes
I told my love
There are fields
I know of
Where the fritillary
Hover in reach
Above
Where there is
No time
No time at all
And that is why
I want to take you there
John Clare Stokes
It wouldn't take much
To sweep me
You could even be gangly
And gnarly
But if you came to my abode
Toting your kayak
With a pack full of
Poems you wanted
Me to help you meld
into a sonnet
While we floated
Upon some clear stream
Sublime
You'd be mine.
John Clare Stokes
She decided she’d
go fishing Sunday
so she fixed up her face
took a sultry selfie
So far she’s caught
five of us
Don’t know the limit
Or even if she has
A license
To catch us
Clare never had her as his own, spurned him, but it never deterred him, the drawing so strong in later years, toward his end, he escaped the asylum he was in, to walk seventy miles in search of her.
I well relate to Clare and his mythical Mary.
The girl from grade school, the one who first kissed me, the one I never broke with, I just moved away in the summer, to this day has a line in every sonnet I compose.
If I found she was seventy miles northward, I do think I would break the walls I dwell behind and set out in search of her.
John Clare Stokes
If you stick around long enough, and have the mindset of one who holds things in memory, long after they should have been forgotten, eventually you just have to purge it, like a tumor, or it will overtake you.
There are many such stories, some now humorous years past the time it wasn't, some that continue to cut, long after the sharp slice, now dull and painful.
She was pompous as a pomegranate dangling upon the hem of a Pharisee. She hailed from Albany where lately she had arrived in our tiny city, comparatively, full of resentment for her demotion. It was her last stop and she was going to take it out upon us at full price.
There was a family of fine cooks out by the airport and it was the habit of many to be found dining with them every Sunday. So it was just a matter of time this pompous Presbyterian would find her way to the finest.
We do not recall the season she went into her closet, arranged by the proper colors of proper wear, perhaps the dark season of fall and winter, but she in her fashionable attire, dragging her husband with the humble name Joe, sat to dine. It was at the time of dessert the delight began, for she was ordering sin. Something familiar to this Presbyterian, even if she only saw it in others.
Well, from then on then, this was her family, this family of cooks. She would do anything for this sin, to offering the chief cook discounts on shoes, why for the whole family, why not, of which he fully took advantage, as the poor salesmen had to drop everything, to please him. And oh, every Christmas and Thanksgiving and Independence Day of Russia had to be catered in, with the stipulation of a big pan of sin.
Oh, he was all in. Charging for the privilege full price. But it mattered not to her, they were family.
It was a bitter sweet day she retired to an island around Tampa. No more chocolate delight. The new manager aghast at the price paid. No more discount on shoes. Why what was a fine cook now to wear? No more privileges for anyone. It had all come to an end.
The pomegranates upon the hem left jingling.
Look mommy
There are aero planes in the sky
So I cease mowing
Sit with camera waiting
Look mommy
Not an aero plane in the sky
And the moon knowing
is sinking
But isn’t the grass glad
John Clare Stokes
I’ve come way to far beyond the age of ten
far, far to ever bring it back again
And now, seven decades into the playing
they are yet saying
it’s time to set aside the childish ways
but there are no nest eggs
no pensions of the prudent
no golden parachutes
I shall not retire to the Blurry Place
These toys shall serve this boy
It’s all he has
Too, too far beyond the age of ten.
John Clare Stokes
Oh Osiana! We shall never know
Why to Benton you came into a world of kerosene
fat lighter walls and woods that seem
To stretch forever above the lanterns glow
Oh Osiana! Too dark were the long Needmore nights
the need to always trim the lamps
set high above your outstretched hands
When to you the stars offered enough light
Oh Osiana! Oil upon your gown of pure cotton
Too angelic for the time you came
Surrounded in the glare of a terrible flame
Too soon after that full moon your dying done
Oh Osiana! Why to a world of kerosene did you come!
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Beyond Measure
John Clare Stokes
Once the man was rich beyond measure
Seven boats for his maritime pleasure
Once the man was rich beyond measure
Seven bikes to pedal at his leisure
Once the man was rich beyond measure
Seven cameras of the fastest aperture’s
Once the man young, time was unmeasured
Seven years if that many now most treasured
John Clare Stokes
When a little boy
When counting to ten
seemed plenty long
to run and hide
I’d find that secret place
where they’d never find me
and they’d search
and their voices would grow
anxious
and they’d say
that’s long enough John come out,
come out wherever you are
Eventually after taking all the fun
from hide and seek
I’d emerge and run safely to the base
but no one was there to tag me
they had moved on to some other fun
today, I am yet in the same hiding place
I can hear God counting
he’s on seven
Oh, He must find me
He must!
Ready or not
Here He comes.
