Orange Hill Hymn

 Orange Hill Hymn

John Clare Stokes

Today the tree that moves me is atop Orange Hill Cemetery in Williston, Fla, place where so many of my loved ones and friends rest from their battles, their struggles, their quest to find the light amid their darkness.

The poem is dedicated to our common battle.

Does a new day bring light?

Has the light swallowed the dark?

Come day a squint into bright

The beams still painfully sharp.

On goes the gauze again

In streams the soothing dark

Not ready to walk in gleams

of light beams deadly sharp.

Many meant for the night

Few called to walk wide waking

Freed from the terrible fright

Always giving, never once taking.

In countless wards the halt

The little wars raging on

Light brigades assault for naught

the darkness ever so strong.

Allured to the prospect of sight

We wave the truce flag and stare

into the blinding beams of night

as captured we fall into the lair.

Hand on shoulder on shoulder on

the line of the lame snakes along

Til all glimmers are finally gone

No one remaining to recall home.

And on the Orange Hill quiet

Faint strains from old hymns

A remnant chants into the night

Pulls the weeds and remembers

Pearl and all of them

Awaiting.

Plaster it

Moulage it

John Clare Stokes

Before comes the

Trampling

When in sand

The delicate print

Remains

Take the plaster

And mix it just so

Return from your

Journey long

Pick it up and

Take at least

Some remnant home. 

Sad smoke

 Sad Smoke

John Clare Stokes

Whatever came of our little lad

Whenever we made a fire outside

He was always there by our side

His pitch fork stabbing the pine straw

Watching the white smoke

Happily consuming it all.

This evening we burned a pine pile

On the hill

It was a good day with an 

Autumn chill

But something was amiss 

With the fire

It kept wafting low toward

The back porch door

Searching we were sure 

For the little boy

As so I finally stuck his pitch fork

Next to mine

On the hill

And for the moment

Lured the sad smoke back.

Common or unclean

 Common and unclean

John Clare Stokes

You can imagine

The chagrin

Of the butterflies

Lowering the swing

Not so my Lord

I am too old to 

Imagine

And the butterflies

Raised the swing

Again they lowered

The swing

Not so my Lord

For I am grown

I do not swing

It was then

I heard a voice

Do not call what I

Have declared

Imaginative playing

Something

Common and 

Above your

Aging

The Shining part 2

 The Grady Twins upon the overpass

In case you are still clueless, I like to create conceptual situations. The Grady Twins from the movie, The Shining, my current project. 

This skinny, is that ok to say Donald?, this skinny panhandler seems to stay at the Archer exit so I'm sure she will be in a future iteration.

Suwannee

Still the vapid banks of molten sand

Sonorous the Suwannee's 

Glimmering grand

Reflecting the eternal shadow's ever burning

Extinction coming in the

 slow rising

Taking all vestige of fire and man

Returning again the pure white sand.

As Yeats

 As Yeats

John Clare Stokes

He wanted so badly

to be a Yeats, a Frost

even a Wallace or Lawrence 

Poets whose words he

marveled how

There were moments

when he’d get this inner

strong compulsion 

of what he wanted to

compose

but his scrabble of words

seemed inadequate 

the result never as 

the inner thought

The old Triton

the maiden so sublime 

fighting

to win her with only lines

Me

 Open eyes

John Clare Stokes

He was between the age of nine and ten

When his eyes were opened

Up until then

There were few mirrors to gaze in

He had little concept of being him

But in that new parsonage 

with the first bedroom ever his own

he stared long at this image 

the full length mesmerizing 

the scars down the left shoulder

chest, throat and arm from the boy of two

who pulled the coffee pot cord off

the stove scalding now at the between 

nine and ten causing the self conscious 

introspective, artistic poetic  life to begin

seldom going shirtless when swimming 

cringing when the scars were seen

with the non scarred staring and

offering their unnecessary commentary

Since between nine and ten

in that West Washington parsonage

when the boys eyes were opened

sad he would think of those without

mirrors or scars who never have a clue

who they are.

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us-

We can find no scar,

But internal difference,

Where the Meanings, are-

Emily Dickinson

“Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face — there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes. Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”

— Fernando Pessoa

Buckeyes

 Buckeyes of Cone

Saturday I took Melanie and mom for a drive up to Cone Bridge landing on the Suwannee to see the state of the river. In the up lands out of flood plain the blazing stars were teeming with buckeyes, fritillaries and a few swallowtails. Arriving at the river, we found the road closed, with heavy equipment about. It looks as if a new boat ramp with a paved parking lot is in the works.

Morning

 On the morning wing

The dawning

 Nymphaea Odorata greets the dawn

Camp out 12 years ago

 Night of the living Mantis

Camp out upon Suwannee Sandbars.