Thomson gazelle bounces as she runs
showing predators chasing her would not be fun
she’s pretty common in Africa these days
Bouncing around in her usual happy ways
"For loveliness needs not the foreign aid of ornament, but is when unadorned, adorned the most"
- James Thomson
She stood there unadorned, yet he loved her
For she left his simple heart all astir
Complicated she was, he understood
Their pairing made in heaven, it was good
Life sometimes works in miraculous ways
It brought them together, still does amaze
Unadorned before, now she's his soul queen
He feels like a king with a crown unseen
Joined forever by a bond that can't break
She is his to adorn, protect and take.
The man she lies next to
Is a good man; her champion,
Defender, and faithful one,
Yet she hardly noticed when the flame
Began to cool and love’s passion
Became an obligation.
The stillness awakens in her
A time when romance
Was where she chose to dance
‘Til there was a boy who gave
His hand to her to climb,
On a night sublime,
An Ancient tower to view
The river valley below
Alit in the village glow,
And rapt them in an aura
Of oneness that seemed
As sweet as life redeemed.
At times since, should a near-sweet
Breeze gentle her face
And carry her to her sacred place,
There, tho years ago, the boy is yet waiting
Who took her hand by chance
And lives again her one true romance.
Copyright Paul Thomson 2023
Stars disgorge energy in waves by fissile pulsations
Equally in all directions, but do not call it darkness
Where those come not our way. Darkness is
A matter of perspective.
A rainbow of photons ignites our neural lanterns;
Globes in 3D to navigate the pitch, the default state.
You and I stand in the same primordial darkness
As “In the beginning….” The light is within, and only.
However, the physics of light does not illuminate
The Way, The Truth and The Eternal Light, for it is not
Of the making of stars, but of the One who made
The stars.
Souls, carrying light as once the living carried,
Follow an ancient Course shrouded in a mist of tears,
To be reborn into the Light as it was before the Fall,
Like one emerging from a cave through a waterfall.
Copyright 2022, Paul Thomson
"The light of the world.”
Those who carry out the Great Commission
Are 'oft mistaken in their hopeful persuasion
That truth once spoken will ignite faith outright.
Yet, ‘tis the unlit candle must come to the light.
Copyright 2021 Paul Thomson
Thompson
Identifies himself with ‘p’ for a reason
He has a moustache that is straight
And investigation is his trait.
Thomson
The other of the duo makes a clear division
By growing moustache with turns in ends
Associates with his identical and creates new comic trends.
(Fictional characters in the comic series of The Adventures of Tintin)
Clerihew 2 Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Joseph May
Date: 26-10-2021
Paper lanterns carrying spirits of the dead
Wind their way toward the Sea of Japan;
A procession bearing its own light,
Silently, to a destination without moments.
Moments, the interface through which life flows
From now to then, are put back like old videos
To be on recall; the deeper the collection,
The more likely reruns become loops.
A sign above the bar promises, “Free beer tomorrow”.
Tomorrow, alas, never a moment, but a construct
Residing near yesterday, is as misunderstood as
The Hookers of Kew; pressing, mounting.
Copyright 2021, Paul Thomson
Regressing to the mean
Mortality seemed "out there", a long climb;
A somewhen to think about another time,
A cloudiness too distant from my prime.
Too quickly have I regressed to the mean
And my end time no longer a dream.
Copyright 2021 Paul Thomson
Is the soul to a human
What the seed is to
A dandelion - a vessel
Of the continuum?
Both are readied for winging;
One swept, unknowing, clinging
Upon the vagaries of zephyrs,
One ticketed to sail the ethers.
The seed carries an embryo where’er blown
Prepared by its mother to grow where sown.
The soul by the Father sown, without misconception,
May be redeemed at will from any misdirection.
The seed may rise a weed or wine
As chance may take upon to dine,
If in lawn or vineyard find,
To its fated end resigned.
The soul may be proscribed or saved
As promised by the One who paved
The Way; choose or deny finality
And thereby spend eternity.
Copyright Paul Thomson 2021
In the before time, my poem an inkling only,
Something nags at me to look more deeply
Lest I pen a shallow rhyme when I might
Have brought a truth, untold, to light.
In the before time, the seed not taken to root,
And I the thumbless gardener in the absolute
Am left with no indication of direction
In spite of my digging and cultivation.
In the before time, I turned to my literary muses,
Dickinson and Whitman, in hopes a word infuses
My child that it may live its life in the way it should
And I, knowing in my poethood, did all I could.
Copyright 2021 Paul Thomson
Autumn Leaves
A children’s chorus opens with “Get Your Kicks
On Route 66” bringing some to smile or lip lyrics.
Others, of fixèd gaze, showing no signs of reception,
Are unmindful of the on-coming destination.
Shuffling among the audience is a woman, shoeless,
Muttering. Any unwitting eye invites the press
Of her ever more desperate pry:
“Have you ever been to Lamoni?”
How like a box of keepsakes whose key
Has gone missing can a life of memories be
Without recall; to live in the moment solely,
Apart from one's yesterdays is unwholey.
Stares introvert now to the folds of inner space,
The mind’s eye probing for the soul’s place,
As the yester-world slips from reach
And an ebbing tide completes the breach.
The psyche again unshielded in its simplicity
Awakens to the call of an ethereal authority,
Beckoning, as from a cave beneath a waterfall,
“Come, there is life beyond this veil and pall.”
Copyright Paul Thomson 2018
Promised Land: A Psalm of Faith
There is a kind of strength comes to a wanting land
(Where six inches of unfavored soil must withstand
A chance for rain), when rooted in the Word
That brings hope through faith.
---And a roadside sign proclaims, "Jesus is Lord"
Expand and retreat, germinate and scatter
Rhythms of nature play out no matter
How the seemingly perpetual estates of man defy.
---And an ancient Ojibwa cried, "Sometimes I go about in pity
For myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky"
I knew of a man broken by this land
Who remains unbreakable in his stand
That he and the grange are one.
When asked why he stays on in this now dead sea,
—-Says only,"This is God's country and I am his son"
Copyright Paul Thomson 2013.
In life,
What calls the heart becomes the legacy
We leave behind
And those endowed will assure that its destiny
Will be manifest in kind.
Builders of
Tombs and monuments, attempts at perpetuity
By those whose vainglories feared only mortality,
(Since at least Ozymandias)
Fade to pitiless objects of curiosity
Sans a life force for continuity.
Then
Mark my end with no icon of marble or of bronze
Whose fixèd stare dons but one gaze on and on.
Rather find me in those I taught
Shared with, loved and fought,
For
I am yours as surely as when I lived.
Summon me through times remembered
(The image of our laughing renews your smile)
And I will be yours again
In ways open to us now 'ere we began.
And
When comes the Call, whether your heart
Will heed
Can a legacy live and an endowment start
In deed.
Copyright Paul Thomson 2016
If what I say I see is an image my brain forms
From stimulation by certain waves, then
When I say I see something “over there”, I do not see it
There, I see it here in my brain in three dimensions.
“There”, everywhere, is dark. Enlightenment plays only
On screens in brains where there are eyes to see.
But is what I say I see really the way something looks?
Yes, so far as I remind myself the image is but an artifact
Created within the limits of my eyes to capture and my brain interpret.
If so, how would the same something “look” in ultra violet or far-red waves,
(Is it all illusion?)
If we had such eyes to see?
Is it the same with other senses?
With hearing my dog thinks it is
Since I seem to miss so much. Ears deaf
To all but those of the waves we call audible,
Leaving so much music unheard.
I think how Mozart would have frolicked
Through notes extending to canine ranges,
If we had such ears to hear.
Surely all waves carry some possibility
For perception, some new way to find our way
But most are either denied or undetected.
I am impoverished by waves I cannot ride.
Copyright Paul Thomson 2021
“If a tree falls.....?” No, there is no sound
Without an ear to hear.
If light shines on....? No, there is no sight
Without an eye I fear.
Footsteps are not heard upon a stair.
Nothing that can be heard is heard there.
There - is as still as night before dawn,
Like waves with no shore to break upon.
Images do not appear where we peer.
Nothing that can be seen is seen there.
There - is as pitch as anthracite,
Like flint with no steel to strike.
Just as a candle lit upon a spirit boat
We flow through our dark world afloat
Thinking the world bright, but the light
Shines only within, all else is midnight.
There - everywhere - is dark and muted,
The senses are but energy transmuted
By neural lobes, without which life is stark;
An amoeba oozing silently through the dark.
Copyright 2021 Paul Thomson
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.