Best Sentries Poems
Cauliflower clouds drift past broccoli trees,
where bright carrot paths lead to vegetable seas.
Tall corn sentries stand straight in a row,
while wild little radishes have no where to go.
Straight stalks of celery spar with asparagus heads,
with an audience of onions and green lettuce beds.
Big juicy tomatoes go look for a thrill,
they stomp on the squash but fall flat on some dill.
Fresh cut potatoes walk boldly around,
quiet cucumbers make barely a sound.
All of them gather; sliced, cut, skinned and pearled,
as I survey my great edible world.
The Dark Side of October
Late October moon is waking, through this cemetery shaking,
shaking as the cold wind breaking, walking ‘neath an old oak tree.
Stones like sentries undertaking, guarding graves as hearts are aching,
aching for the still ones staking, such an eerie sight to see –
dark and dreary, I’m so leery, such an eerie sight to see –
is this but a reverie?
In the graveyard shadows shimmer, dark of night is growing dimmer,
dimmer still without a glimmer, shadows ‘round the old oak tree.
Shadows dancing ever nearer, nearer still and getting clearer,
clearer like distorted mirror, twisting ghastly sight to see –
growing vastly, looming lastly, such a ghastly sight to see –
certainly a reverie?
Piercing sounds are penetrating, ear drums deafening pulsating,
ringing louder, devastating, echoes off the old oak tree.
Echoes bouncing screeching grating, ever louder agitating,
instigating, fears creating, from this ghoulish sight to see –
Am I mulish, maybe foolish, such a ghoulish sight to see –
surely just a reverie?
In the dark my head is spinning, round and round these sights imprinting,
fusing on my brain beginning, questioning my sanity.
All these sights and sounds are weighing, weighing as the ghouls are playing
playing as they do their preying, preying on my vanity –
I am praying, ghouls are swaying, preying on my vanity –
have I lost my sanity?
Eerie night just seems persisting, lasting as my mind is twisting,
waiting for daylight’s assisting, lighting up the old oak tree.
Eerie sights and sounds now fading, dark of night for daylight trading,
light of day is now invading, leaving me to clearly see –
seeing nearly, life so dearly, oh so clearly now I see –
must have been a reverie…..
or have I lost my sanity?
July 26, 2018
Taking a long ink dip in a desert pond,
rejected drake words
ripple echoes in the wilderness: Tread with care!
Dreadnought thoughts silicate crystalized,
glass menagerie opens to a darkening sky
Wing-tipped metal muse raised to the foreboding air,
infusing liquid lightning to the bard birds
Watching intently as the anti-gravity atoms abscond,
executive electrocution is on a delay timer
Prose avian sentries see
Splitting anti-social charges
seep into the hate-soaked, polluted atmosphere
These momentous crisis changes,
poets of a new dawn articulate so very clear
Tho’ labeled by a scornful society
as being conscientious ugly ducklings,
the fear factor in the swirling wind
keeps increasing it’s whirl war buffeting
Incoming V-formation of ionized mallard birds
dropping kinetic malevolent words
Stork deliver radiation babies —
Blackhawk moving targets that glow
with surgical stealth Caesarian precision
Whilst the designated survivors
be the fleeing flock having open duck ears
Poets of a new dawn
continually pen agitate
strong current ripples in the desert pond
Letting their U2 ugly quill mirage liquidity
dose infect the minds of those
who syringe swan dive in beautiful disbelief
Little blades of grass touching my naked feet
Oh, the soft pleasant touch, the trodden path
I am treading again; though this is my first
Venture, my maiden hike towards the peak
The great heights of the neighbouring mountains!
Have you ever lost yourself in the benumbing wilderness?
Have you ever heard the silent call of the Titans, metamorphosed
Into rocks? Little nameless flowers swaying their heads
In an enchanted dance; the chill in the air
Gently touching my mortal body, making a grand statement
“If the heaven exists anywhere, it’s here, it’s absolutely here”
The eternal path leads you from crag to crag, from bends to bends
Like a child of nature I play hide and seek with the impish fountains
And waterfalls, oh how majestically they cascade down
On the wings of wild butterflies,
Swiftly hiding
Into impregnable gorges
The hairpin bends
Beckons
Oh, the wider stretch again
Looming, there is before, the endless and bottomless
Gulf of the sky, kissed benevolently by the sunny morning
High and hoary oaks and pines
Standing on both sides like insomniac sentries
The intolerable ache, nearly paralysed feet
One
Step
Forward, another
One
Inflated lungs
Is it the end of the road?
Oh, god, at last, yeah, at last
I am on top
I am looking beneath towards the inviting clouds
My eagle soul outstretches its wings
The sky kisses my forehead like my mother
17.09.2014
Contest: Pinnacle
Smiling down on His creation,
evergreen sentries gave Him peace.
Turquoise lake held the reflection
of Rocky Mountains with snow’s fleece.
Nature’s beauty is leased to man
by an Artist with a loving plan
Splendors filtering light from sol’s fingers.
Winter sentries stand looming in the shadows cast by moonlight.
In the cold polar breath, nothing lingers;
guard duty shifts when Spring arrives; old Man Winter can’t take sunlight.
Evergreen dreams, salvage his empty eyes; splashes of color.
Carpeting pines are homes for beings of flight.
Giant oaken knights defend woodsy borders, among others;
stretching to drink sunlight.
Just listen to the gossip of the leaves in the breeze;
Secrets shared, bond these beings.
Their bodies strong, defend against high winds.
Protected by bark sweaters, they may still freeze;
some will break; some will bend; others will succumb while many mend.
The most precious gift Mother Nature bestows, the gift of trees.
October blows a symphony of sighs
with blustry gusts that presage winter's bleak
arrival as I shuffle through the park,
kaleidoscope of leaves a welcome prize.
Swings unswung on, roundabouts without
the rush of children stutter to a halt.
October blood suffuses to the hilt
my heavy heart, and calms a soul in doubt.
Images, bright images that have no
need of language, the pictures tell the tale,
a gang of schoolboys, picnic-packed, hale
and hearty, hoping for a hint of snow,
their teacher, raven-black, with no command.
Oaks stand guard, ramrod-straight like sentries,
rhododendrons, strong and sprawling bushes,
a place to smoke illicit contraband!
The dial at sunlight's pleasure points to time,
the weather vane makes plain the wind's direction,
no need of clock or any vain contraption
to guage the day, its reason or its rhyme.
The stillness of the morning and the day-glow,
and meadow grasses blessing me with softness,
the rippled waters thrilling me with sweetness,
what other measures do I need to know?
October blows a symphony of sighs,
of spells and incantations for the wise,
who, weather-worn and beaten, seek the skies
or haunt the woodlands for a siren's eyes;
for nature is the most compelling teacher,
companion to my father and my mother,
she cavils, then is kind, just like a brother,
and binds our earthly tapestry together.
Around that table, picture the scene
Self appointed leaders if you know what I mean
What were the topics on the Agenda that day
The Jewish race is about to pay
Who gave the right for this decision that's made
Who has the right to cleanse and degrade
To decide who lived, to decide who dies
Another chapter, I still wonder why
They came in the day they came in the night
Women and children pulled out of sight
Herded aboard like cattle and sheep
Many a family awoke from their sleep
Dazed and confused as they are taken away
Where will they be at the end of the day
From their warm houses and their warm beds
What must be going through their heads
As they travel through days and through the night
Up ahead, they see lots of lights
They depart the trucks and board the train
Their faces scared under the strain
Asking questions from family and others
Generations, sisters and brothers
Why are we here, where are we going
Windowless carriages with no way of knowing
We come to a stop, soldiers aplenty
Towers and wire, topped with sentries
What can this place be they have taken us to
As we head to large gates as they shuffle us through
Families separated, herded in file
Women and children, not one did smile
Taken to rooms where our heads were shaved
Is this the way humans behaved
Clothes discarded, as we enter the shower
No signs of water no signs of power
Doors slammed as we are all crammed in
History will recall this evil of sins
As we stand in the dark, chanting Jewish faith
Can hear the voices can't see the face
Noises above, do the showers start
The event has begun that tells us Humans apart
Questions and sighs, as walled vents show daylight
Some thing is falling then their slammed tight
A strange aroma starts to fill the air
As all around are screams of despair
Twenty minutes have passed and the quietness is rife
Two thousand people, two thousand lives
Pellets called HCN, or Hydrogen Cyanide
Contribute to this Genocide
http://www.thehighlanderspoems.com/war-2.php
Burned out dreams
Lights strung above this out of place darkness
create shadows of an invisible existence
Filaments of glowing hopes and wants
droop towards empty heart beats
I am alone in this overcrowded nightmare,
checking the time on faceless moons
Floating in no particular sequence
like sentries on broken boundary lines
An endless runway of lifeless orbs
dot the landscape in Morse code warnings
As I turn away in a curved defiance,
unable to accept the words touching my eyes
And still, glistening drizzle falls from overhead wires
reflecting each tear drop of dampened descent
For even if I wake, screaming as the night disappears,
she will still be gone, like every other burned out dream
...inspired by 'Especially When The October Wind' by Dylan Thomas
October blows a symphony of sighs
with blustry gusts that presage winter's bleak
arrival as I shuffle through the park,
kaleidoscope of leaves a welcome prize.
Swings unswung on, roundabouts without
the rush of children stutter to a halt.
October blood suffuses to the hilt
my heavy heart, and calms a soul in doubt.
Images, bright images that have no
need of language, the pictures tell the tale,
a gang of schoolboys, picnic-packed, hale
and hearty, hoping for a hint of snow,
their teacher, raven-black, with no command.
Oaks stand guard, ramrod-straight like sentries,
rhododendrons, strong and sprawling bushes,
a place to smoke illicit contraband!
The dial at sunlight's pleasure points to time,
the weather vane makes plain the wind's direction,
no need of clock or any vain contraption
to guage the day, its reason or its rhyme.
The stillness of the morning and the day-glow,
and meadow grasses blessing me with softness,
the rippled waters thrilling me with sweetness,
what other measures do I need to know?
October blows a symphony of sighs,
of spells and incantations for the wise,
who, weather-worn and beaten, seek the skies
or haunt the woodlands for a siren's eyes;
for nature is the most compelling teacher,
companion to my father and my mother,
she cavils, then is kind, just like a brother,
and binds our earthly tapestry together.
Some birds are sentries to the sky
others are earth or water bound
some bumble about the lifeless rye
others are cherubs of the clouds-
Some are regal and soundless
others tend to echo from the grate
dictating to others how to sing
while cawing and poaching eggs-
Some build nests of grass or leaf
sacrifice everything for their babies
some birds just play a mating game
then just as quickly up and leave-
I'm convinced most birds are heaven scented.
they uplift and enrich our lives
some are but rhinestone buzzards
plucking others until they're blinded-
Most fliers are garnish for the ages
some live to crap on liberty's bust
a few are fated for mental cages
birds are a lot like us-
There is an awe in the soul
When travelling across the desert’s night.
Silence except for the rhythmic roll,
Signs that light and go dark with the flight.
Stars brilliant, saucer-sized
Against the darkest blue,
Still apprehension in the loneliness
Of desert’s nightly hue.
Saguaro cacti’s moon-lit silhouettes
As sentries standing guard,
A dome of tiny city lights,
So very far, so very far.
Sand hill shadows concealing
Sleeping crawling creatures unseen,
A white stripe seemingly to nowhere,
Fading into where it has been.
And a father sings to pass the time,
“Look down, look down,”
That lonesome road,
Before you travel on…”
“Look up, look up,
And meet your Maker
‘Fore Gabriel blows his horn.”
And a little child sleeps
Across the back seat
And remembers.
Stones stand erect like sentries keeping guard
as I walk alone, with tear in my eye,
through this deserted cemetery yard.
In the back corner stands my father’s grave;
I sadly reminisce the days gone by,
and all the memories my mind does save.
Robbed by old age, my father’s mind was shut;
upper tree branches left to question why.
Strong and sturdy the lower branches, but
barren branches of a willow tree die.
June 11, 2018
Contest: Rhyme Time 4 - 10 Lines
Sponsor: Laura Loo
All are feeling anxious on the old camp ground this night.
Weary Yanks are girding for tomorrow's awful fight.
Young soldiers loll about, staring blankly into slowly dying embers,
Dreaming of home, recalling happier times that each remembers.
Supper is finished, the usual rancid coffee, hardtack and beans.
The sentries call out, "All Is Well!", one of their hourly routines.
Sergeants huddle with comrades, offering solace to their platoon.
From across the way is heard a harmonica's melancholy tune.
From afar, Rebel cannon is heard, a portent of things to come.
Men in gray are readied for battle to the beat of muffled drum.
The ebon sky is aglow with the cannons' awesome display,
Competing with the moon, overshadowing its mellow ray.
Here and there a Bible is opened to the Twenty-third Psalm,
To once again be comforted by that eternal message of calm.
Pensive eyes that on the 'morrow may be forever sealed,
Gaze upward, imploring God's embrace as their guardian shield.
Hastily penned notes read, "If I should be borne to heaven above,
Know that we will be reunited in The Father's gracious love!"
Gallant men draw upon their innate will, apprehensions to allay.
The dulcet strains of "Taps" lowers the curtain on another day.
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(© All Rights Reserved)
Late in the day, there was red on the sun,
Shadows falling darkly, all over the world.
The fragrant evening breezes wandered afar;
And blooms swayed, awash in the tinted glow,
Of the deep golden sun, very tinged in red.
Clouds drifted away, bearing the joy of color;
And trees stood still as sentries of the night.
Cardinal sang a tune, And rubies flashed fire!
The evening was warm, and redness chased day;
And blue skies then, but memory of a morning.
The fireflies were wandering, red on the rose;
And radiance of moonlight, arrived quite soon.
Mars was at the horizon, a scarlet sun shining.
The clock was slowly ticking, beauty abounding!
Such music on the wind, and rapture in the trees-
The world was at the sunset, awaiting blackness!