“The Shepherd” by William Blake [w/ Audio]

How sweet is the Shepherd's sweet lot!
From the morn to the evening he strays;
He shall follow his sheep all the day,
And his tongue shall be filled with praise.

For he hears the lamb's innocent call,
And he hears the ewe's tender reply;
He is watchful while they are in peace,
For they know when their Shepherd is nigh.

Picture Horse [Lyric Poem]

Stacks and stacks
of wooden plaques:
Prayers on front,
Art on the back.

Each a wish
and a dream?
More an expression,
or so it seems.

Whatever prayer
may be writ,
There’s always
something
more to it.

A need to show
one’s unique soul:
To tell the world
that one is whole.

A life reduced
to a shingle:
Multitudes,
to a single.

Inside View [Senryū]

snail stretches
to view the beautiful house -
too close to see.

Flower Mind [Free Verse]

Morning Glories
don’t feel slighted
because they bloomed
in the shadow of
Mexican Sunflowers…

Though the humans
who otherwise might
stop to admire them
can now not be
bothered to notice them.

“In a Disused Graveyard” by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never any more the dead.

The verses in it say and say:
'The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.'

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

Pigeon King [Haiku]

pigeons mill about --
then one finds color
in the gray city.

Short Days [Haiku]

winter afternoon:
light drains away before
the sun is down.

Mid-Winter [Haiku]

mid-Winter
pretends to be Autumn:
green with leaf linger.

“A not admitting of the wound” (1188) by Emily Dickinson [w/ Audio]

A not admitting of the wound
Until it grew so wide
That all my Life had entered it
And there were troughs beside -

A closing of the simple lid
that opened to the sun
Until the tender Carpenter
Perpetual nail it down -

Ice-laden [Haiku]

ice-laden trees:
frigid limbs wish to dip,
but are too stiff.