! ! In Praise Of Praise Poem by Michael Shepherd

Good dog…! ’…

Your faithful hound closes his eyelids
for a fraction longer - could this be bliss
so pure that humans rarely know it? –
rests his head for a few moments
on your knee; twitches tail, just once,
to indicate the words received:
the one phrase which, it's said,
(quietly; almost, to yourself)
completely understood and shared
by man and dog: fulfilment
of the karma of companionship..

*

Yesterday, I was praised.. or rather,
there was praise for something
that was enacted through me..

Such a moment is too valuable,
too full of self-knowledge, to be dismissed
with embarrassed modesty: live it:

for a moment, one is in the presence
of oneself: here’s a giant; here’s a hero;
who is oneself, and yet, is to be worshipped
as the fulfilment of all one’s wished
oneself to be: being and worthship
come together in a purity..

so, praise the praisers! – who are all too few;
cast aside that English fear
that praising may involve some personal
commitment that one later may regret…

to be praised, is but self-dedication
in which praiser, praised, are alike; at one;
and from that moment on,
live together in that unity
and grow from it in ways
that must be lived and known, to be believed..

come now – tell me that you don’t
remember clearly, the very words your teacher said
the day they praised you from the heart
so unexpectedly, you even thought them human..

or what your mother’s friend (your mother,
who could never find it in her to so praise you in the words –
despite her sweetness for some reason –
with which, your mother’s friend later told you
she boasted of you, out of your own earshot…)

praise the praisers! join their ranks
and find that magic wand:
spoken directly, face to face;
or if you must, discreetly passed,
its implications hanging golden in the air…
that magic wand, which grows the soul
of giver and receiver joined as one in One..