Wiggins, Stannard,Millar and Froome
Steeled to bring Cavendish fame
But from the rear one
The Kazakhstan man old
One Alexandr Vinokurov
And from the young Brits steals
The glory of the gold
Johnclarestokes
catalog my father ordered his grapes on December 11, 1978. At the time my father was nearly at the end of his two year ministry in Lake City from 1977 to June of 1978. This would be his last church, as he formed the Luther R Stokes Evangelistic Association, purchased an old house on St.John's Street and spent more time in Crawfordville, the twenty-acre property he purchased from Mrs Lucille Towles in the late sixties. Typed inside the catalog was the note: Grapes around garden in backyard, starting at smokehouse: Two Dixie, One Pride, One Chief, Two Noble, Two Jumbo, One Southland, Two Sugargate, Three Cowart. Pictured is the smokehouse, the first out building my father and I built behind the old house. I have the bell on the cross tie in my backyard. I plan on ordering these same grapes from Ison's in Brooks, Georgia and planting them in my backyard in the same order.
john clare stokes
i bend and face the colors
in the wind
enveloping me in the hues
as today a vivid blue
chose to color me
saturating my being
in the wind seeing
the mood blowing
gently then briskly
from ultramarine to
cobalt to a phthalo
as from the west
came the silver gray winds
so prevalent today
overtaking the colors of blue.
I have written of Judy's Tree before. Today I took a twenty mile bicycle ride into the Osceola National Forest via the old Still Road, stopping to pay respect to the Judy Tree along NFR 278 or now McColsky Avenue. And who you say, was Judy? Judith Hancock in 1979 became one of most ardent friends of the environment when the DOT cut down a legacy oak tree by Popeye's chicken in Lake City for the widening of US90. "It was a really big, nice old oak tree, and I was incensed, absolutely incensed, because they could have avoided it," she said. "I joined the garden club and fought it, put nasty signs up and tied yellow ribbons around it, but they eventually cut it down." At the suggestion of a Garden Club member, Judy joined the Audubon Society, and the rest, as they say, was history. Judy passed away from cancer on June 28, 2004 at the age of 65, with the Osceola and Florida losing an ardent, tireless defender of things wild.
Several years ago, Steve Williams, a fellow Audubon member and long time friend of Judy and I placed this plaque in the crooked pine Judy when living always would point out as we passed, as her tree.
I've nearly completed Castle Hell
It was of my own making
Taking brick by brick all resentments
And cementing them in memory
Life's blueprints tried to tell me
Not with resentments
But with forgiveness
Light and airy
But I was not one to follow rules
So I continued to build this
Castle of a fool.
And Jacob wrestled with that bike all night
While the squirrel Esau barbecued was out of sight
To a fathers delight
Johnclarestokes
After the smoked mullet and foaming brews
As the morning catch iced on the slimy dock
And as the stinking chum began to stew
Into the ocean the two lovers did drop
Pressed against the rusting rail they clasped
Gulls scattering from oyster shells openly seeping
Lurching out beyond memories of caresses past
Far from the bar the lovers were swept
Throw the Jim Buoy to rescue the down fallen
tumbling couple tangling in monofullfillment
Slowly sinking to Asrai’s calling
Beyond the grasp of mortal help
And yearly we return to gather on the docks
Throw the wreaths to appease the craven sea
As the tide swells and the waves lift
upon the outgoing tide receiving the gifts
We raise a toast to lovers whom oceans need.
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
Don’t know the limit
Or even if she has
A license
