The Shepherd

The Shepherd
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For XJ:
"Away in a manger,
No crib for his bed…"
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What do you know:
Knowing one to have already gone.
A fleeting shadow.
A memory of your past.
A flicker of candlelight in the dark.

"Turn Left, Turn Right"
You laughed at the triviality.
The naivety; the simplicity.
How could I make you understand
It was much more than that?

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I sit upon a ledge,
Teertering on the great beyond:
Beyond my world and yours.
What is this I seek to conquer?
What do I seem to find?

A lost cause?

An unjust hand, holding you from
Holding me;
Once, a long time ago,
Which seems only yesterday past,
You said we'd see the hot gates together.
Or perhaps, it was I
Who suggested it.
And placed it in your mind?

"Hot gates. Hot cakes.
What's the difference?"
I see only the similarity in the two.
The two, heated in the radiance
Of some infinitely crying,
Some infinitely inexplicable thing.

I sit on shifting sands.
My hands grow cold, my fingers numb:
As I clasp yours.
"Those were pearls that were his eyes".
And those I grasped, coral.

Ancient horns signify a second coming.
Tell me what you are thinking now.
And I’ll do the same.
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The little boy alone tended to his sheep,
Saw a star flash across the heavens.

I saw that too.

A Flash.
But you don't say.
Hardened heart, cast in stone:

I hear only what you say.
And what you say,
Is what I don't hear.
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Look up now, into the sky,
Look out now, into the sea;
For within the clouds,
Casting their silken image
Onto a mirror-like seascape:
Therein I reside.

Do not tell me,
I have waited too long.
The sun is almost at its zenith.
Don't mention what I have known;
That your tethers create mocked puppetry.

Don't.

The past be the past.
Or the forever is the future.
What You hear, shall ever be
In the annals of glory,
In the fortress of the sanctified.
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I sit here now,
On the edge of uncertainty.
A tide of change rushes in.
Seeing the hands, the arms, the faces,
I’ve known them all.

So tell me this only,
So I may lie to rest:
In the vaults,
Of your mind