Michael Shepherd Poems

Thanks to the hundreds of you who daily
are so eager to enhance my life
and that of my partner
with pills and extensions
...

Who is grateful for a long life
when that life gets just too long? ....

meanwhile, while
...

O You Who Are - the formless, nameless One,
more real than all forms and names can speak:

You for whom we seek to find a name
...

She saw them coming, that rainy day;
popped her head out of the cave,
saw them trudging sandalled up the hillside;
...

It's a book of two halves

First half, a lot of whistle-blowing, rule-breaking, penalties, and the ref keeping strictly to the rules
...

It's a bit like a trip in a hot air balloon -
the hot air of thousands of years of
poets poetizing; all trying to float a little higher than the everyday,
just a little lower than the angels -
...

First, of nature's course, it was the birds;
for theirs the air, above and over all;
knowing by intuition without need of words
as providential, seasoned, sure
...

I wrote, attempting French for a beautiful image which seemed halfway to French already:

Quand les oiseaux migrateurs
rouillent sur leurs branches,
...

Plato would have favoured
That internet dating site -
All ideal and Platonic
('til that risky meeting night...)
...