Michael Shepherd Poems

and there’s the presents
which we don’t talk of
which we secretly wish
for ourselves; wondering
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I love poems that grow
out of themselves
out of nowhere really
...

You can't write
much out of spite

but if you make nice you
...

All the marvels of creation
are gathered round laughing,

placing bets on
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Marc – remember splashing through the waves,
and walking barefoot in the sand, so fine
between the toes? And how the breeze, that day,
caressed your face, in 1989?
...

If you saw the film 'Four Weddings and a Funeral'
you'd have been moved maybe to tears
by his 'Funeral Blues';
...

On the top unlooked-at shelf
of the cupboard rarely opened
there it was.
A tidy, self-effacing, neat and ordered pile
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What was known, was known. They asked
the artist who had sat all that bright morning, cool upon the hill,
to draw the trees in front of him, as sunlight crept
among the leaves, now here, now there,
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It’s only now, only now, that I remember, that I can see,
how you made your presence felt so often;
so long unlooked for, seeing only absence, never believing presence;
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'Trees need their alone time too' I read it just now
in a poem by Bob Hicok and just like that
the world expanded thoughtfully and gloriously
and I imagined the whole of nature
...