Throw back

 Throw back

Often I go back

And replay the time

O'er and o'er

Like a Floyd Echo

I never tire

Of the sound.

Butter beans

 Butterbeans 

Cousin Thelma Bolton’s signature song at the Florida Folk Festival was butterbeans she would usually sing by popular request. I too love butterbeans. Last night around eleven, seeing the ham hock I’d been slicing off sandwiches from, was all but bone, I got a hankering. I then began digging in the freezer, and to my joy, came upon a bag of them good ole butterbeans on the bottom.

This morning before Melanie left for another weekend shift, another story, I asked if she’d add the right amount of water. She did and left saying, now don’t go off and forget them. Well, I hope not. Now if only I had some good ole cornbread, I think the cares of this life would grow strangely dim indeed.

In morning cool

 In morning cool

Pausing from leaving JT at TLC for the day, there in the garden across the highway were the three working in the cool of the morning. I so saw my father there, water hose in hand, going about methodically to each plant, knowing how much was needed for the day. Then, come evening, he’d repeat the watering, giving the plants enough for the night. And eventually, as the other two, with weeding and pruning, the garden would respond bountifully.

Cardinal rules

 Cardinal rules

For such brilliant color, the Cardinal I find is quite shy. They don’t perch long in one spot. They mostly have a branch or some object between them and my camera. Today I changed out the water in the various pots, upgraded to a mixture of more sunflower seeds. For the time, they seemed a little less cloudless sulphurish. Cardinal rules

For such brilliant color, the Cardinal I find is quite shy. They don’t perch long in one spot. They mostly have a branch or some object between them and my camera. Today I changed out the water in the various pots, upgraded to a mixture of more sunflower seeds. For the time, they seemed a little less cloudless sulphurish.

Sirens

 Sirens of my past

Intaglio etching

2x2

Oxology

 Oxology 

The ox rests in the pasture at Shaker Village at Mt Pleasant in Kentucky. A journey I am grateful to have taken and can take again through photography.

Rough start?

Rough start?

Begin at

Zebra and Zinnia

And count back

Oceans call

 There are times

I portend

I do miss

The ocean....

I cannot hide

There are times

That I am drawn

Toward the tides...

I have to say

There are the days

I roil upon

The inner waves...

While in my mind

I find

The break of infinity

Time and time

Again

In this ocean.

Johnclarestokes 

To the tides

Leaves of glory

 We saw leaves go to glory,

Then almost migratory

Go part way down the lane, 

And then to end the story

Get beaten down and pasted

In one wild day of rain.

We heard "Tis over" roaring,

A year of leaves was wasted.

Oh, we make a boast of storing,

Of saving and of keeping,

But only by ignoring

The waste of moments sleeping,

The waste of pleasure weeping,

By denying and ignoring

The waste of nations warring.

Robert Frost

Glory for the small

Ascribe glory

To the majesty

Of the One 

Who gives a

Coat of royalty

To His smallest

Subjects 

Poison man

 Write me off

John Clare Stokes

Often it crosses my thought

What thing did I do

For one to cross me from

Their life?

I think for some I may have placed

A moon in a moonless scene and 

maybe another I took

A photo of a coed crossing the street

And they see me as some voyeur

Still another I may have said

I took this photo yesterday

When I took it in seventy three

I mean

Couldn’t they tell I am now hairless?

And there was maybe one

I said Hillary should have frozen atop 

Everest 

Or what of the one I think wrote me off

because I said God is a chicken

and I’m under His wing

Couldn’t figure if he took the Bible

Literally or figuratively 

Or allegorically.

But either way

It wasn’t funny I think.

And that great group of many

Who left me simply because I left

Their congregation 

And I wasn’t even thinking myself

Southern baptist

Having grown up United Methodist

I must have mistook my dispensation 

I was thinking I was in all grace

It must have been all law after all.

Throne of John

 Throne of first John 

Once I was a king with a throne

I ruled the realm from Faith, Rose

Orange and Dickson Street in the land

of Sopchoppy, the county Wakulla, the State of Florida in the great 50’s America 

There was a sister one Paula Jean

meant to sit upon the throne

She was to be called King Paul

but she came out gender wrong