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Best Poems Written by Ed Evans

Below are the all-time best Ed Evans poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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A Veteran

I am what others didn't want to know
I went where others feared to go.
My training in violence was nothing new,
But I did well what they were afraid to do. 

I don't hate those who refused to go
I did it for my country, not for show.
An eternal loneliness beyond the pale
Was my certain reward should I fail. 

I have seen terror's deathly face
And feared to go, but kept the pace,
Enwrapped in the cold sting of fear
I fought for buddies and those I hold dear. 

I've known sweet love and a moment's kiss
And wished for all the world I could stay with this.
But I was committed and I knew my lot
To live out death and dangers best forgot. 

Shrouded deep in the stink of death
I've cried aloud and tried to catch my breath,
While my soul screamed out to God where I'd been
To just once more escape the living pain, again. 

Going where others wouldn't go
Knowing what others wouldn't know,
I am the stuff of legends and lores
I am a veteran of my nation's wars. 

I ask only a moment of your day.
A moment of silence out of the way,
Ask only that you honor the debt
Of freedom bought: don't forget.

by E. Marshall Evans

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Morning Garden Perfume

Someone has said that all you need
Is a library and a garden
In order to harden
Yourself against life, or so I read.

My library is stuffed with tomes so full
My wife has vowed
I'm not allowed
To give in to another book's literary pull.

But out in the garden I'm my own man
For she won't step outside
To even decide
On a flower bed, bush or a patio plan.

Out there in the garden of perfume and hues
Honeysuckle and roses
Tickle our noses
In as religious an experience as pulpits and pews.

Pungent tomatoes and the pale scent of string beans,
Yellow squash blossoms
And marigold awesomes
Twist scents and senses into imaginary scenes

Where tall okra and hollyhocks are kings and queens
And only peasants of history
Are allowed to be sensory
In a land where only noses will know what it means.

by E. Marshall Evans

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Ridin' On, Alone

Ridin' down into the canyon
Looking for some strays
I chanced to think about
The passing of the days.

Been chasing after cattle
Seems a mighty long time
And all those days I ain't be able
To save so much as a dime.

Never thought I'd get rich
Hiring out with herds
But cowboyin' and old age
Seems really for the birds.

My backside and that old saddle
Have formed a kind of warp and woof
So the leather's highly polished
And now there's snow upon my roof.

When I was a young stud
With a bellyful of fire
Living day to day was okay
And riding out for hire.

But now the cows are contankerous
And cow ponies ain't so smart
So I've started in a-wishing
I had a gal to share my heart.

There was a gal in Lubbock
With long and yellow hair
But that was a long time ago.
She's no longer there.

I remember what it was like to love
Then left alone to ache
Lonely hours in the saddle
Every memory a heartbreak.

All those years riding the range
I've had some time to think
Of the difference 'tween Hereford hides
And skin so soft and pink.

But now time and youth are gone
Left back there in the colorful past
Old horse and I are all that's left
Alone on the range as long as we last.

by E. Marshall Evans

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Never Alone - May 1, 2014, National Day of Prayer

When you find yourself at the end of your rope,
Tie a knot, hang on, and don't give up hope.
When nothing's right, and you're a knotted mass
Take a breath, this too shall pass.

When all the world seems on your shoulders,
The rocks you trip over seem like boulders,
When you're hope is dropping like a falling stone,
Take heart, take faith, you're not alone.

In the celestial scheme of things that go right
At end of every day is finally a night
That dawns to a new day with the rising of the sun
When another chance, a new time is begun.

When solutions seem lost through a glass too dark
And what's wrong is coming fast and too stark
Stop, drop, kneel and pray to the One
Who has the answers, God's only Son.

This is His world, the one He made
He won’t allow His own to fade.
No need to stand lost and alone out there.
Talk to God or you haven’t a prayer.

By E. Marshall Evans

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Winners Risk All

Winners Risk All

Aware, after spending the day teaching
Reminiscing, remembering, reliving
And interpreting events reaching
The wizened children of my own age.

We of the 1930s and 40s
Seem to have spent our lives
On adventurous sorties
Of claiming, defending, inventing

The stuff of which men and women today
Put together new adventures made of
Claiming, defending, inventing in a way
That seems bloodless, aimless and wispy.

We who are now on the frontier of old age
Can still taste the salt of the bloodlust
From the memories of the wars we wage
Alive still in the annals of our mind.

Have not given up on the battles we led
We have not given up the ground we stood on.
Our causes are anything but dead
Standing aged and worn, lined with time.

Though the energy is gone and strength is bereft
Compared to the younger set
There is more victory, more joy in the life still left
Than in bloodless games with no winners or losers.

One day we will all go down to the grave
Leaving only memories behind among the living
But this century's old ones go down brave
As victors with the decision to the winners.

by E. Marshall Evans

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My God, How It Hurts

My God, How It Hurts

We have forgotten
How dangerous is this man
Refusing not to do miracles
Abjuring not to love
Going beyond His mother's pain
Beyond being a good son
To do the Father's will.

We have forgotten
The depth of evil
He allowed to drench Him
Bleed and bruise Him
Beyond all human endurance
Gleefully denying Him
For whom He was born to be.

We have forgotten
The love of the Father
So fully developed for us
He had to turn away
At that moment on the cruel cross
When God-given life
Was given up.

We have forgotten
How dangerous is this man
Whose love was more than life
This Son of God
Whose promise to us meant so much
That He shrugged off death
And He arose.

by E. Marshall Evans

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The Waves

Strolling along Myrtle Beach
Collecting shells in the sand
The waves become hypnotic
And the mood moves into grand.
So many thoughts and memories
Come rushing back with the waves
Thoughts that flood and can’t be stopped,
Some get panned, but some are raves.
Again and again
They flow in and out
Life reliving every decision
Life reliving every doubt.
Then sanity reasserts
For the mind knows what it knows
And hypnosis grinds to a halt
With the sand between my toes.
By E. Marshall Evans

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A Life With Background Music

"Waltz Across Texas With Me"
Comes violining through my mind.
I may be the only one in the world
With background music of that kind.

Ever since I was a little shaver
The background music's been there
But when I mention it to others
They just raise an eyebrow and stare.

It's not like I'm looking for it
It just melodies in unbidden
A secret source, a covert concert,
The rhyme and the reason are hidden.

Sometimes it was kind of funny
From times now past and gone
For in battle it was the William Tell Overture
Exciting me, urging me on.

The Colonel Bogey March
And Richard Wagner's War Horses,
The music always appropriate
And I never wondered the sources.

But mostly these days the music has changed
And I'm hearing a lot of hymns.
This old machine is getting older
And I'm running on the rims.

I thank God for the background music
That lifts me above the herds.
So if you hear a humming sound,
Relax, I just forgot the words.

by E. Marshall Evans

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The Best of Times

We have lived 
In the best of times
Where music was clean
And poetry rhymes.

Where a girl could walk
The streets all alone
Without the safety
Of a 911 phone.

Where decency led
And civility was the rule
No one suffered
The acts of the fool.

When it was okay
To let out a howl
At the precision proficiency
Of Frank Sinatra and Eleanor Powell.

Sad that such things
Now bring on a yawn.
Such times of enjoyment
So innocent and gone.

by E. Marshall Evans

Details | Ed Evans Poem

Resurrection Changes Things

What once required the sacrifice,
That bloody gift of death and gore,
Of animal life to pay for sin
Is left behind and is no more.
Resurrection changes things. 

Jesus Christ obeyed the Father,
Sacrificed Himself on the cross,
Evened up those holy books
That list our profit and our loss.
Resurrection changes things. 

Where once we followed our understanding
And made our own decisions,
Now belonging to Jesus Christ
Our life is one of holy revisions.
Resurrection changes things. 

When we're united with Jesus Christ
We're a new creature in the Son;
Our old way of life hangs dead on the cross
And life everlasting is now begun!
Resurrection changes things. 

No prison doors can hold our soul.
Christ sets our spirit free
And fills our life with love and hope
That rings our world in victory.
Resurrection changes things. 

So tell someone in the pain of their life
Of the freedom Jesus brings,
That sets us apart from sin and death;
How the soul that's set free sings!
Tell them:  Resurrection changes things. 

by E. Marshall Evans