Storm Brewing

The train station lay empty
At that hour
Before the storm's arrival -
Outside a passing shower.

In all the fuss over survival
No one remained to serve me tea.

The people of the world had reached their home,
The train stations of the world great, empty spaces.
Those without destination thread their way alone,
Seeking the solace of tea in solitary faces.

The Beast

A peasant
From the age of superstition,
Days of pestilence and hunger
And nights of endless dark,
Would see a horror far more stark -
And dangers far more strange -
In our present modern age.

From every mouth pours forth a rage,
From which the ancient devils cower,
In mad desire we gorge our flesh,
Slaves to a modern, bestial power.

It thrives upon our constant needs,
And upon our sickly fear it feeds;
Taking cloudy shape from seeds
Within our ever-grasping greed.

We see the monster in the mirror,
Faces that fancy beating death,
Yet still our last day draws nearer -

Even as our voices launch
Forever and far
Into the stars -

We are gone with out last breath.

Shepherd's Task

The words could drop and land
In intricate patterns,
Like the first rain drops
On a hot pavement,
Tracing intricate patterns
With obscure historical allusions,
Novel grammatical intrusions,
Terraced on a page -
All angles of confusion.

But why bother?

Time was when a man
Would seek to understand
A message as it ran
Across a page,
Finding in the words
Nothing strange,
Their straightforward motions
Tracing a man's notions
Of truth and beauty
Of god and time,
In simple rhyme.

A poet should know enough
To come in from the rain.
An unlikely leader of men,
He is called to lead again,
To lift our modern apprehension
And bring mysteries
Of the world and mind
Within man's comprehension.

Compassion

Every day somewhere in the world
Someone dies who understood
Compassion – a song in the wood
Sung by a bird
Few had heard
Or understood.

If one day the birds were all to die,
The wood would scarce be silent.
Creatures beneath the canopy sky,
Their hunger lifting fitful cries,
Not fit for song,
Or baleful rhyme –

Their alien sounds, in passing time,
Nest in the empty clearing
Of our silent hearts.