In dream
by John Clare Stokes
I cannot escape this stream
forever taking me further
down in the strong current
toward an open gulf
depositing me to bob
in a tide of the moons clutch
this dream of making it
upstream just once
past the Dottie tupelo
we once measured
exclaiming it was a record
tree way up here alone
on this upper Suwannee
sending her jams down
to sweeten the journey
jars upon jars of the
spread upon the sands
to sustain those journey
struck longing to return
to their Dottie tree.
Harlot Rout
John Clare Stokes
Must the Harlots always win
Taking at will the fatted men
Making no distinction
Of age or ability
To function
Just taking the money
Without compunction
Must the harlots always win
Grinning from the screen
In unseen dens of home
Alluring the gawking in
Giving in to the sin
Must the Harlots always win
Taking all the men
Leaving them but shells
Of guilty Deacons
Seeking victory over
The overwhelming odds
With God their conquerer
Kicked to the curb.
Lone Oak of Lona
Many trees grow by stealth, ignored until they grow to intrude upon power lines or property lines or become belligerent, dropping limbs on roofs or leaves in pools. Happy the tree planted to grow to maturity for generations, free to drop limbs and leaves with abandon.
When I was a boy growing up in Sopchoppy, I would go out in the Apalachicola in Grimes Bay with Mr George Strickland shown here and his son Robert, one year older than me, to check his hives for bear. I still recall that chilling feeling of coming up on torn up supers. Ole Slewfoot struck again.
Oh Kentucky, when I am lonely and the autumn breezes chill me, in your bluegrass hills I long to be, place of boyhood spills and college thrills, where ever I have roamed, from Florida's sands to West Virginia's mines, always it seems I am drawn, to the Kentucky I once called home.
Deer Boy
I see they finally got
You deer boy
Oh boy
One-hundred and twenty five
Atta boy
Like a lots
And way to go's
Later
Hung you for all
To gawk
Sorry for all this
deer boy
Granny never wanted
That deer blood
Transfusion
You were not meant
To live unhunted
You were a deer
Not dear
No longer a boy with
Spots beneath the palmetto.
With Me
John Clare Stokes
All day she told me
She could sit and
listen to the poetry
And I had just enough
audacity
to believe her
so I stacked deep
the volumes of
Clare
Yeats
Burns
Stevens
even
some of my own
and waited to read the one
that began with the line:
Maid of the wilderness,
Sweet in thy rural dress,
Fond thy rich lips I press
Under this tree.
then:
I thought of your beauty, and this arrow
Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow.
to:
Come, let me take thee to my breast,
And pledge we ne'er shall sunder,
And i shall spurn as vilest dust
The world's wealth and grandeur!
finally:
God and all angels sing the world to sleep,
Now that the moon is rising in the heat
And crickets are loud again in the grass.
The moon burns in the mind of
lost remembrances.
And I would have read them all
Had we but the time
But came the arrow
the vile dust
the heat
and this Robert Frosty
simply melted away.
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
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.
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.
