Klein time

Klein Time

John Clare Stokes

Today I heard a knocking

It was at the degree

Of sixty

I knew he'd be coming

Burning day light, you see.

Upon the red Klein

Huret counter set to zero

A century I expect this time 

Toward Moniac we will go.

Resting at the East Tower  

Huret cyclometer at twenty five

Over the drop bars i cower 

Seventy-five more I cry!

Sand and pines 

Sand and pines

Will the miles ever end

Red Klein way ahead

Slow squares I spin.

Parched in a mirage 

Moniac and the end

There sits ole Rog

Offering me a fig newton.

To Roger Kosch Sessler

March 22, 1932

October 22, 2011

October wind

 October wind

We know the winds of March and

how the winter they part

ushering summer upon us

But the winds of October foreign

with winter soon returning.

Whatever came

 

Life is scarry

 Life is scarry

In this world of body piercing and full frontal tattoos, I come bearing the scars of my own making, the result of pulling a coffee pot of boiling water on me, as a child of two. I did not wear my scars proudly as a child. I went to great lengths to conceal them, making great excuses for wearing a tee swimming. What angst to be chosen on the skins team. The kids in their comments were brutal. And so now that I am old, I have finally learned, no one cares for these scars but me. Today I shaved all facial hair. Not even the wife noticed. What a waste of angst all those years.

Shoals

 I have got to the age now where I can see how short a time we have to be here. And when I think about it, it can seem strange beyond telling that this particular bunch of us should be here on this little patch of ground in this little patch of time, and I can think of the other times and places I might have lived, the other kinds of man I might have been. But there is something else. There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things. 

~ Wendell Berry 

Jordon at Big Shoals

Suwannee

Photo by John Clare Stokes

Gadarene

 Gadarene

Sometime I see myself as the crazed

Gadarene

Living chained among the tombs

Striking great fear

In all who would venture near

Other times the one in his

Right mind

Sitting quietly at the Masters feet

Striking great fear

In all who would venture near.

As trees

 As trees 

John Clare Stokes

You get to the age

When you think

By now I should 

See clearly

But the vision is

Still cloudy

Men as trees walking

Not discerning

An arm from a branch

A leg from a root

And the voice you hear

Is it of man or is it

Of fowl

I take to the limbs

Carefully

Saw in hand

I begin cutting

Not knowing from

Whence comes

The screaming.

Is it sap

Or is it blood?

Father of a certury

 Father of a Century

Johnclarestokes 

I cannot fathom how he did not make it to a century

I truly thought that lean raising in Homewood, Mississippi 

Would prepare him for making it easily

He never tired when working the long

acre rows with the sharp hoe

Digging the endless stretch of posts 

Hole after hole

Waiting patient for the boy so slow

And when he preached and sang

He was so much larger than his frame

Thanks to him so many to heaven came

This day the son upon sixty-nine  will reflect

Cinch his old bolo and recollect

The father of a century he'll always respect.

Rev Luther Ray Stokes, would be 102 today.

Luther Ray

 Father of a Century

Johnclarestokes 

We cannot fathom how he did not make it to

A century

We truly thought that lean raising in Homewood,

Mississippi 

Would prepare him for making it easily

He never tired when working the long

acre rows with the sharp hoe

Digging the endless stretch of posts 

Hole after hole

Waiting patiently for the boy so slow

And when he preached and sang

He was so much larger than his frame

Thanks to him so many to heaven came

This day the son upon sixty-eight will reflect

Cinch the old bolo tie and reminisce 

The father of a century he'll always miss.

Rev Luther Ray Stokes, would be 102 this Oct 16.

Lone chimney

 The lone chimney

Near Luraville 

Nothing evokes sadness 

And melancholy more

Than a lone chimney

In a field or beside a lane

Or under a spreading tree

The speculation 

Of who warmed by the hearth

And what came of them

If they had to flee

A late night burning

Or if they just up and

Abandoned 

The embers smoldering.

Anthem Ascend

 Black and White Challenge #1

Anthem Ascend

My father had just died. Over his body I scribbled these lines for the nurse to read at his bedside memorial at the VA, later posted to the back of his funeral program.

End of muted silent spring

Low the Lily bends her stem

Who can hear the mockingbird sing

The flow of waters above the rim?

Gently into sweet home 

Ascend

Sounds afar draw ever close

In the light stands a friend

All our fears He so knows.

From clays abode we break

The stem grows straight again

Eyes open and faith we take

Never more by sin to bend.

Arise! Arise! You sons of clay

Upon the chariot of fire ride

Enter now the eternal day

Christ the King at your side.

Bleach bond

 Bleach bond

john clare

The bleach and the vinegar were a volatile mixture

The fumes finding their way into the bedroom

To satin sheets to settle upon

The wrapped mints on the pillows melting

The roses on the bedside table wilting

The deadly fumes inhaled  slowly

She tried desperately to hold her breath

But she was soon drowning

Sinking deeply into dreams

Of when it was not such 

Drudgery, the laying, the bleaching, ironing, washing, scrubbing, living, loving, breathing

Along beside her once lover in unison

This stranger who once showered her with 

Roses, wild flowers, candy, mints, poetry, living.

They found her turned a beautiful shade of jade 

The bleach and vinegar they said leeched her color

Leaving her but a shell 

Like a porcelain glass statue

Going up until the end

Through the motions, moving 

in unison with the strangers

rising and falling breaths

Beside her.