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Samuel Moreland Poem
It feels like spring has left these feet,
My steps come far less quickly now.
I find less solace in the load,
I find it easier to bow.
Yet in your eyes there’s no defeat,
And still with you I walk the road.
Copyright © Samuel Moreland | Year Posted 2025
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Samuel Moreland Poem
The headlights of a tractor drew my great-grandfather to his death.
Anglerfish of steel, power take-off a maddening buzz –
Was the barn dark? Could he see the terrible twisting machine?
And did he see it, in the instant before the ordeal
The forty days’ hellish road ahead before he reached heaven?
Did the lonesome valley stretch out before him in the gleam of the wrenching clamor,
And did he lean out and see the glow at its end?
Shriek and wail, slam and crunch.
Did the dying man see far?
And would it have been better, after all, to know what would be coming?
From plowshare to fig tree such a divide, better not to know, I think.
Certainly better for my uncle, who found him there.
Copyright © Samuel Moreland | Year Posted 2025
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Samuel Moreland Poem
The great big oak tree casts off his coat while the rest of us put ours on,
Throwing down the golden-brown piles of spiky leaves,
A dance floor for the couple everyone’s talking about.
It’s their time now, their time in the pallid sun!
And sure, Holly might make a scene, berry-ripe in snow, like children’s faces,
But her slender partner really steals the show.
Ivy’s green, she winds, she twists, she makes her place secure – winds both ends at one go.
And oak and ash don’t mind her creeping up and down – they know.
They know as well as you and I
That when the summer’s in the sky
And flowers are all in bloom,
Ivy dies before the trees. Her time comes all too soon.
Copyright © Samuel Moreland | Year Posted 2025
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Samuel Moreland Poem
O Quintessence!
That which makes us, shapes us,
Through the dirty day
From dust to dust –
Did they know, when they unleashed you, what they wrought?
Stellar eternity condensed in cataclysmic instant,
Iota wreaking death, and smaller blasphemy –
Brief man stealing star-power against the night.
Did he know, when he died the little death, what he was doing?
Not you, for true, but great symbolic father in the garden;
Death brings death, seed seed, life life – the third will last
Then may we live in harmony with you, O fundament.
May we find a link that harms not you nor us.
The wild fruit we may not see again,
And End awaits he who tastes the tamed –
Somewhere in between, then, and let it, like a pomegranate,
Sweet us, bind us to it, that me dwell our time
No less, no more.
Copyright © Samuel Moreland | Year Posted 2025
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Samuel Moreland Poem
The old dragon speaks The Old Lie:
There is honey in my jaws!
No more must it hunt its prey
The knights went extinct long ago
And now the rats are happy to scramble
slide
fall to rise
chase
only to find
teeth
and sans life, sans everything.
The old witch speaks The Old Lie:
Toil and trouble, I'll let you in!
Her house is sweet, and warmed by ovens.
If water is poison, how then shall she die?
And the children come like ants
from colony
without community
growing falsely fuel-fat
and water cannot quench a grease-fire.
The old man speaks The Old Lie:
Things were better once, we can bring hims back!
Over-ripening citrus in the sun - fruta amarga
Front tries to hide the rot with rind
And we all lined up to say His is the power!
His the glory!
Hail the reborn lord!
Hail the king of Casablanca!
So help us God?
So help us God
Copyright © Samuel Moreland | Year Posted 2025
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Samuel Moreland Poem
What is the goose without the flying vee?
Solitary, ugly, fleeing frost alone,
Beating wings without respite as the gale comes on,
Trying not to feel the winter in his bones.
And yet, and still, he hears the solitary calling:
"Transcend, traverse, fly on alone!"
Pushing the horizon to its limit,
Sucking the marrow from life's bones.
The unknown lonely waits, blue yonder question.
To stay, to seek, to yearn, and still to feel.
Only he can know what lies ahead,
And, helmsman craft in one, he must decide.
Copyright © Samuel Moreland | Year Posted 2025
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Samuel Moreland Poem
Dirty warmth of tousled hair spills over shoulders,
A chocolate fountain, strong and rich,
Whose sweetness strays my eyes from the chessboard,
Running along tresses blazing golden-brown.
Despite the warring sides between,
In my heart there is peace.
Two minds entwined to one,
Black and white a prism of joy.
We need no priest to unite us --
This castle is ours, and we sit enthroned,
Watching the hapless peons wage their little war
And nightly feel sublime adjacency.
Copyright © Samuel Moreland | Year Posted 2025
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Samuel Moreland Poem
We burn bright, burn brief
Sun is not long when come the stars
Blue yellow green turn grey
With just the briefest patch of red to mark their passing
We are fireworks, never really matching words to action
But close by the blaze it's hard to tell.
We yearn to join our sparks together,
To rise, mortal momentary ember
To combine, combust in one
To make our small obeisance to the sun.
Copyright © Samuel Moreland | Year Posted 2025
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