Poetry Blog by keith jeffries

Never Enough

There is no ultimate height to be reached

No passion that can be fully satiated

We fly high once in a while then plunge

Down to the nest from which we flew

Satisfaction is a mediocre expression

It barely describes ambition least of all desire

Our arduous searching becomes circular

Round and round we go chasing our own tails

We seek sublime happenings in...

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Incipient Signs

Crocuses appeared on the lawn

an overnight surprise

in the shade of an ash tree 

which still slumbered 

in the belly of winter

I opened a small window to welcome

the incipient signs of Spring

A gentle breeze blew the curtains

to and fro

as the billowing sails of a

bygone galleon

A watery sun illuminated the room

exposing windows...

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Reunion

I had not seen him for over fifty years

we had planned a reunion after years of letters

In the past, soldiers together, comrades in arms

we were a part of each other's history

Our reunion had been arranged

I arrived early to be greeted by his daughter

Dad has taken the dog for a walk, she said

In the distance I saw him, immediately I knew it was he

I walked ...

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Retreat to Natrun

Along a gravel road into the desert

wavering dunes cast over vast tracts of land

covered by endless shifting sand

Up to where sit the modest hermitages

on the precipices of the wadi's edges

In seclusion, no illusion and no intrusion

a solitary life without any confusion

A foresaken place more silent than the grave

from where only the...

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The Earth Sleeps

One layer of snow is impacted by another

As one flurry folllows to enhance a pristine scene

The night is as black as ink and so very still

A fox tip toes about a line of waste bins in search of scraps

Only the occasional street light reflects a snowy landscape

Beneath each snowflake a somniferous earth lies hidden

The heart of winter has reached its death...

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Grandpa

He had fought in the Boer War

and later in the Great War

When I came to know him after

the Second World War

he was a man I sat with and

held in awe

He lived alone in an isolated hamlet

not many miles from where Shakespeare

wrote Hamlet

Advanced in years with wrinkles which

betrayed his age

he smoked black twist in his pipe 

like an old sage

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Borrowed Time

Two skirmishes with death came many years apart

I remain here as I did at the very start

Older yes and wiser I may be

Yet here I am for all to see

Life could have turned the other way

But modern surgery held sway

Is the span of life based on luck

Or is it written above in a special book

Some are born dead and others die young

And into old age we are...

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The Echo Chamber

We live in an echo chamber

          often in a quandary of despair

A place where the doors of gas chambers

           are slammed shut

To the sound of screams as mothers hug

          their young

Dark days and times remain with us

          unabated

Past evils are reincarnated with prejudice

          a destructive force

Souls damaged by viol...

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