Michael Shepherd Poems

to enjoy the enjoyable. It seems a modest enough aim
and what we're meant to do by human nature, surely? and yet
that urge to set up the next scene, to move on - do you remember
those old films where the heroes were always saying to their side-kicks
...

Sometimes memory
runs back like an instant fast rewind
like it’s said to do at death
and hits you wham between the eyes
...

What is it doing on the clean carpet,
that bit of pink something?

Not a curse upon the house-proud
...

and it’s difficult to say exactly
what they do, or
how useful that task really is
...

they’re ‘close’, we say,
wishing to be fair, kind, just;
wishing not to know too much;
in case this clouds
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Oh the pleasure, the happiness,
the delight, the joy, the bliss,
of doing just one thing above all!
...

Between each word, what happens in the mind?
what moves from hearing, seeing, through the worlds
of thought; emotion; both perhaps enjoined;
what depth of silent stillness may unfurl?
...

Didn’t seek it; didn’t choose it;
didn’t want it; can’t refuse it;
so it's up to you to use it;
you must suffer if you lose it;
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From time to time, when
I’ve been meditating, and
these things matter, I pick respectfully
the plastic flowers from their vase,
...