This November Evening...

I Sit Here This November Evening

As I sit here this November evening, it occurs to me,
    That I am passing time counting markers to my life
        With a sense of waiting.
And I ask myself, "Waiting for what?"
    For my dreams to come true? To achieve some goal?
        I have no dreams. I set no goals.
I only wish to move quietly, gently as possible - to hurt no one.

I see myself in another time, in a new country,
    Far, far from this little house
        On this little street.
I see green fields, planted in corn,
    Cattle grazing in the pastures and lovely bright woods,
        Where I can take long autumn walks and lie down to sleep
Unafraid, if I so choose.

I am tired, so tired of pretending to be happy here.
    I see no magic cure for what I believe is true;
        "This world is not my home," as the old hymn says.
And is it home that I ache for?
    I am a nomad not by my own choice
        And I am no good at it.

I look to the night sky and find Orion
    And whisper in my heart to God,
        "Come, come, come Lord."
Sweet Jesus, loyal brother, precious Savior, my friend.
    My home is with you. I am not waiting for death.
        I am waiting for life.

Read my thoughts. Feel my pain. Purify me,
    As the bride would bathe herself for her lover,
        So would I cleanse myself for you.
Come for me. Take me home. Come for me. Come for me.
    I beg you my love...
        Come for me.

© 2009 by Sheila King

April 30 - A Good Man Gone Home

A Good Man Gone Home

We lost our good soldier today
   He was a fighter to the end.
He was alone but not alone
   For angels, men like him attend.

God gave to him a quiet going,
   A peaceful passage on.
To sleep awhile a dreamless sleep.
   And for a little space be gone.

But in the universe we're told
   That nothing good is really lost,
For He who spun the cosmos out.
   Paid the restoration cost.

He's caught a ride, gone on ahead.
   And left us all to follow on behind,
To work our own salvation out and then
   To catch him up at the terminus of time

We did not lose our soldier after all,
   He's merely left behind the pain
Resting till the world winds down and we,
   All meet up with him again.
  
© 2020 by Tom King

April 29 - Tech Support

April 29 - Tech Support

How’d we ever get along without tech support,

You know that guy with the Pakistani accent

That explains why you’re an idiot for not seeing,

The menu icon in the lower right-hand corner.

And because you couldn’t figure out how to navigate

The 17 menus it requires to undo the damage

You accidentally did to all the passwords

On your social media pages and shopping accounts.

So that you have to spend the next week

Uploading new passwords and trying to dig

The rest of your digital life from out of a gazillion

Electronic data points buried in the digital swamp.

But at least tech support people are polite about it,

Because you can gripe to their supervisor if they're not.
That's why they beg you to give them five stars when you rate them,
And they stay on the line till you tell them you're happy.

Not like in the old days when a customer service rep

With a Brooklyn accent and loads of snark in her voice

Used to lead you out into the verbal brush

And insult you to your face. And worse she got away with it,
Because if you wanted to gripe you had to call back,

And crawl your way through 10 or 20, menus or operators

Designed to wear out your patience so eventually you gave up,

So, when I think about it, "God bless tech support, Asian accents and all."

© 2020 by Tom King

April 28 - A High School Graduate Who'd Seen What Was Coming

A High School Graduate Who'd Seen What Was Coming

A high school graduate who'd seen what was coming,
Saw that college courses downward were dumbing,
To him twas a mystery
Why you'd study art history,
When you could make more studying plumbing.

© 2020 by Tom King

April 27 - There Once Was a University President

There Once Was a University President

There once was a university president,
Who raised tuition so high there's no precedent.
He said, "The government's paying"
Besides the socialists keep saying,
Tuition will be free for each U.S. resident.

© 2020 by Tom King

April 26 - Texas Bluebonnets

Texas Bluebonnets

Each spring in Texas
  When I was a kid my family used to go for drives
      With a picnic basket and a cooler in the trunk.
Each time we'd find
   A roadside park beside a field of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes,
      Like a blanket of cool red and purest cerulean blue.
Each spring and early summer
   Me grown up, kids of our own, we'd take trips that wound
      Through Texas hills blanketed in rich blue against the still green grass.
In Autumn where life's driven me
   The bluebonnets of spring are miles and months away and yet,
       If I close my eyes, in the cool of evening I can feel them still.
In Winter here no seeds
    Of bluebonnets lie beneath the snow, waiting for the spring.
       It's a comfort though to know they wait for spring in Texas soil.


© 2020 by Tom King

April 25 - A Premature Requiem for Poets

A Premature Requiem for Poets

Poetry is not what it was
A hundred and ten years ago.
Before we had TVs' or cinemascope
Before there was even a radio.

You didn't have CDs or even,
Albums of popular songs
If you didn't play a decent piano,
It was hard to host sing-alongs.

If you could not carry a tune,
Then poems were all that you had,
Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth or Shelley.
You could read if your singing was bad.

With technology our tastes grow eclectic.
We've the best in music and singing.
Our poets are performers these days.
So free verse is history I'm thinking.

I don't think it's so bad we should mourn,
Poetry's not dead it just ebbs.
I think that poetical verse will remain
As long as there are world wide webs.


Professional poets write music these days.
Classical musicians write film scores.
Art evolves by natural selection.
And gets better the more it explores.

And poets and singers once going unnoticed,
Have a web page and post poetical sessions.
All by themselves at no cost to their pockets,
They publish without anyone's permission.

Cruising the ocean of artistic devotion
The work of shopkeepers and peasants.
And mothers and children who love to create.
Is a pastime that I find quite pleasant.

You may not find tens of thousands of fans,
But you may find in creating your art,
A way to connect with poetical friends
And it may be good for your heart.


© 2020 by Tom King