Michael Shepherd Poems

It was a fine early Spring morning, and in the Forest the Animals were busy Being Themselves, and doing all the things that Being Oneself involves.

Pooh had had a Being Myself morning, sorting out the hunny jars and wondering if two half-full jars were really quite the same as one full jar, or really quite different; and why a half-full jar looked quite different from a half-empty jar..
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There's a nip in the air these days.
Time for self-improvement.

In evening class, some nights
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Look inward to God,
Look outward to God,
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Dunno about you (that’s why
I’m writing this poem) but
it’s the noun thing, ‘poet’: as if
you’re simultaneously committing yourself
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It is chandeliers
brought alive with candles
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who does not wish, openly or secretly,
to meet it, in some quiet place?
even a secret image in the mind's dead index
of those materialists who
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The defence of free speech -
glorious battle without end.

We even must defend
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I didn't wave anything at the Queen
when I saw her leaving an official reception
sitting bolt upright in the car,
still, pale, exhausted,
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Did they already have the image of that creature
grazing deep within their heart and mind
before the day when it revealed itself, gentle, sweet and mild,
living its life of glorious detachment,
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The veterans of the last time
die off one by one
with a smile
and bitter memories
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