Michael Shepherd Poems

I deeply resent
the ad above this poem
(well it was there
last time I looked)
...

This first August week, the geraniums
are flowering their second flush:
they braved last winter, huddled like cabbage stalks
so as to be inconspicuous
...

A poet friend spoke of a poetic form called a ghazal
and said, why don’t you try to write a poem like a ghazal?

They’ve been revived in recent years in English, in fact
...

Darling, we need to talk...
no not here and now; in private..
it's about synecdoche...
...

Always, behind the known,
the greater unknown…

behind the tedious Latin translation,
...

Honey,
i wanted to write you a real blaster
so i looked in 'Writers' Weekly'
and sent off for 'Freshen Up Your Love Poems'
...

In the hour of our departure O Lord
In our beginning is our end
...

To My Beloved I said
‘When I am away from you, O Beloved,
out in the market place of this world,
I remember that I have forgotten
...

See this fine manuscript
so beautifully illuminated round the picture –

why, it’s none other than Kabir!
...

‘O My Beloved –
I lose myself in the world’s distracting multiplicity,
yet cannot find the One in my restless mind –
I am in a desert place, a place of desolation… ’
...