As a lover of poetry I thought I'd share some of my favorites with you all, I hope you enjoy.

 

The Calf Path

 

One day, through the primeval wood,

A calf walked home, as good calves should;

But made a trail all bent askew,

A crooked trail, as all calves do.

Since then three hundred years have fled,

And, I infer, the calf is dead.

But still he left behind his trail,

And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day

By a lone dog that passed that way;

And then a wise bellwether sheep

Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep,

And drew the flock behind him, too,

As good bellwethers always do.

And from that day, o’er hill and glade,

Through those old woods a path was made,

And many men wound in and out,

And dodged and turned and bent about,

And uttered words of righteous wrath

Because ’twas such a crooked path;

But still they followed — do not laugh —

The first migrations of that calf,

And through this winding wood-way stalked

Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane,

That bent, and turned, and turned again.

This crooked lane became a road,

Where many a poor horse with his load

Toiled on beneath the burning sun,

And traveled some three miles in one.

And thus a century and a half

They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet.

The road became a village street,

And this, before men were aware,

A city’s crowded thoroughfare,

And soon the central street was this

Of a renowned metropolis;

And men two centuries and a half

Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout

Followed that zigzag calf about,

And o’er his crooked journey went

The traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led

By one calf near three centuries dead.

They follow still his crooked way,

And lose one hundred years a day,

For thus such reverence is lent

To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach

Were I ordained and called to preach;

For men are prone to go it blind

Along the calf-paths of the mind,

And work away from sun to sun

To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track,

And out and in, and forth and back,

And still their devious course pursue,

To keep the path that others do.They keep the path a sacred groove,

Along which all their lives they move;

But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,

Who saw the first primeval calf!

Ah, many things this tale might teach —

But I am not ordained to preach.

 

~Sam Walter Foss

 

If Jesus Was Born Today

 

If Jesus was born today

it would be in a downtown motel

marked by a helicopter's flashing bulb.

A traffic warden, working late,

would be the first upon the scene.

Later, at the expense of a TV network,

an eminent sociologist,

the host of a chat show

and a controversial author

would arrive with their good wishes

-the whole occasion to be filmed as part of the

'Is This The Son Of God?' one hour special.

Childhood would be a blur of photographs and speculation

dwindling by his late teens into

'Where Is He Now?' features in Sunday magazines.

 

If Jesus was thirty today

they wouldn't really care about the public ministry,

they'd be too busy investigating His finances

and trying to prove He had Church or Mafia connections.

The miracles would be explained by

an eminent and controversial magician,

His claims to be God's Son recognised as

excellent examples of Spoken English

and immediately incorporated into

the O-Level syllabus,

His sinless perfection considered by moral philosophers

as, OK, but a bit repressive.

 

If Jesus was thirty-one today

He'd be the fly in everyone's ointment-

the sort of controversial person who

stands no chance of eminence.

Communists would expel Him, capitalists

would exploit Him or have Him

smeared by people who know a thing or two about God.

Doctors would accuse Him of quackery,

soldiers would accuse Him of cowardice,

theologians would take Him aside and try

to persuade Him of His non-existence.

 

If Jesus was thirty-two today we'd have to

end it all. Heretic, fundamentalist, literalist,

puritan, pacifist, non-conformist, we'd take Him

away and quietly end the argument.

But the argument would rumble in the ground

at the end of three days and would break out

and walk around as though death was some bug,

saying 'I am the resurrection and the life...

No man cometh to the Father but by me'.

While the magicians researched new explanations

and the semanticists wondered exactly what

He meant by 'I' and 'No man' there would be those

who stand around amused, asking for something

called proof.

 

~Steve Turner

 

The Charge of The Light Brigade

 

Half a league, half a league,