Ode on a Wedgwood Urn

It’s a gentle green in colour,
sits on the shelf, still, contained,
containing, and content;
around it, another world
is playing out its immortal role,
in constant movement which
somehow conveys to us, stillness,
peace; there’s order in that world;

and yes, John, you could well call it,
unravish’d quietness: (you said, once,
in your romantic way, that
you were certain of nothing
but the holiness of the heart's affections,
and the truth of imagination;
here's the urn to prove it..)

erect yet relaxed in pose,
hair in a chignon, one hand
touching her neck, the other

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Unmethodical discourse at a café table

By the flickering candlelight
of the long evenings,
inimical to study so they said

they played this game
to while away the time
between learning and authority

in that Jesuit college
in the early 1600s:

blindfolded or simply shut-eye and don’t cheat
you turn the pages of the Latin dictionary at random
and stick a pin, in turn, upon a random word;

the first to make a sentence
in the fewest rounds, the fewest words, wins
a prize of choice..

we do not know the prize

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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0031 Ted and Sylvia meet the marriage counsellor

‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds
admit impediment’ – and let me say
first of all, that I’m all for that…
but Dr Freud asked me if I’d call you in –
that is, invite you – for a little chat;
there’ll be no fee, of course…
Sylvia, would you sit over here,
and Ted, you over there?

I’ve read your case notes
which my secretary compiled, from
your previous poems – she’s quite
well-read; indeed, I believe she’s now applied
for a post with Mr. Eliot the poet…

Now I understand you’re both madly in love
and – ahem – can’t wait to ‘get at
one another’ as they say these days …
I guess the ‘Do not Disturb’ notice
may be there for days, ha ha?

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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The Mind's Strange Beauty, with Its Smile

It’s said, that when our mind
awakes, out of that sweetest place
in which it sleeps, rests, is refreshed;
in the morning; or in those
rare moments when we let it take its rest;

this wondrous instrument, invisible,
yet holding all we think is ours…
in the twinkling before it spreads our world
before us, like some awed geographer
unrolling with two hands a map from polished rods,
inviting exploration, conquest, or desire…

in that great moment, as it emerges from that place
which is to us no place… that holy place,
of universal mind before it’s individual –
that bran tub where we thrust our eager arm –
splits its precious unity, which some mighty force
beyond place and time itself, has decreed that mind
may find itself, or lose itself, in multiplicity –

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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0005 Totally Boring Poem

I’m totally bored by:

poems that sound like other poems

poems that try to sound unlike any other poems

poets who never take risks

poets who think that taking risks
makes them good poets

poems with 'meaning'

poems with no meaning

poets who slag off other poets
as if that achieves something

poets that tell you that rhyme

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Abbot John of Forde at prayer

All the wonders under heaven and earth
would take more than a lifetime to enumerate –

why then, to be surprised, that One
can speak to such as me,
not in my outer ear, but straight
into my inner ear – nay, right into my soul
his gnosis whispers as it were myself
that spoke it… whispers
such sweet things,
that though they blessedly inform my later words
- as these to you – yet they tremble
in their truth, upon the very edge of words;

whispers such new things to me,
though such things, old to Him,
old, but present; thus, they’re ever new…

for this, I’d waited; waited in the stillness of my heart;
now listened as it were to all

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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The Week Between Christmas and New Year

These are the strange and dull and heavy days
(in the Northern Hemisphere at least –
we seldom spare a thought for what ordeal
our brothers and sisters, basking in the summer sun
are passing through in mind…)

For children, these are precious days, of course –
waking each morning to the knowledge of new toys—
(premature, by orthodox tradition – a birth, of course,
but not yet the presents that are due
to celebrate the Epiphany, the showing-forth of Love Itself)

but are there other gifts which grown-ups have not found,
buried in the garden soil, the frozen fields?
For it seems this week, as if the earth and nature
are caught up in some mighty pull
as this great globe itself rounds some vast narrow bend
and we with it; as if we are nature, earth as well:
aroused by some peremptory alarm clock
at some ungodly, godly hour,

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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0013 The Witness Box

It was a minor court case –
a matter of a market trader
selling maybe stolen goods,
the police attempting, probably not for the first time,
to get clear evidence to nail him…

but for those serving on a jury
for the first time, an occasion
full of all the solemn majesty of law;
the difficulties of following court proceedings;
weighing the evidence; and most of all,
the fear of convicting an innocent man –
even, as visibly here, a slippery man to deal with.
The court was small; almost intimate.

After the grubby, vague, sometimes seemingly irrelevant
prosecution claims (points being made that
a jury would not appreciate, involving finer points of law) -
and, months after the event,
policemen reading from notes they took of the case

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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The Mind's Polarities

It’s said – and so it seems to be –
that when the individual mind
emerges from that place where mind
rests, perfect, and in unity with all things to be known –
in that place, which is; within us, and without us:

that in that moment, as the mind expands,
and as its sphere within expands to match that sphere without,
polarities arise; such axis as may join them
to lie hidden and forgot; instead we see
all as remotenesses, that grow ever more the farther;

and then – the aweful nature of the human lie –
name them ‘opposites’… and in that step,
a further one, ‘duality’…

and so, condemn ourselves to fruitless life
where, across the vast mind’s sphere,
sadness – let’s say – sees, far off, that pure happiness -
too far, too far, to be within its reach…

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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0244 Trying to write a sonnet

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 -
whoops, there's four lines gone already...

so, the first four lines or so say
where you're taking this trip from, hoping
to arrive somewhere quite new and unexpected
after fourteen lines, otherwise
why take the trip at all?

so, fire up the burner of ambition, whatever,
and we're into the second four lines now;
floating in an easy, silent, gently breeze-blown world,
a poet's paradise,
where the mind is stilled, the beauty of the landscape
almost beyond words (ha!) : all perspectives on the world
altered; but do we know now where we're heading?
It's a cool way of experiencing altered state

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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