Poems from a dedicated service person and poet: Lew Taylor, deceased

Lewis B. Taylor, R.I.P.

THE OLD VETERAN

I was born in this house on a country lane

that has become a four-lane pavement

across fields my ancestors cleared

and my father farmed during all his years.

I have lived my years in this self-same house

at peace with all men, except when called to war

to defend the land my forebears built.

I was proud to fight, preserving the land I knew.

Now, I die in a land I do not know.

This is not the land my father built.

It is not the land I fought to save.

It is a foreign land, with ways I cannot comprehend.

Is it the fate of generations

to die in lands they never knew?

--Lewis B. Taylor, from Lees in the Pail, 2009

~~~

ON THE COPTS IN EGYPT

All light is lovely in darkness.

A candle can be a beacon on a starless night.

They who trim the flickering wicks

May light a whole land.

One who travels in reflected brilliance

Never knows the worth of one long candle.

Then, moving from light to darkness,

He gropes to find familiar forms.

Holding no candle of his own, he gropes.

And then at last he sees.

The source of brilliance is the shining of a million candles

Each held proudly high

By solitary trimmers of wicks.

--Lew Taylor, from Drippings in the Pail, 1995

de TOCQUEVILLE WAS RIGHT

He said,

Americans

Will prosper until they

Vote themselves money from public

Coffers.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Orwell

Saw it clearly,

A vociferous few

Can make themselves more equal than

Others.

--Lew Taylor, from Cinquains Caught in my Pail, 1998

AT THE FIFTIETH REUNION

(of the Class of '47, U. S. Naval Academy)

The Class

has seen a life of forty-thousand years

nurtured from more than eight-hundred roots,

each anchored here in honored ground.

Uncommon men united in common cause,

gathered from around the earth,

began here the voyage of The Class;

a voyage on eight-hundred compass headings

that embarked from our hallowed yard fifty years ago.

Mystic ties unseen join this now-shrinking band.

So long as survivors range the earth

they are The Class, wherever each may be.

There will be no new recruits.

And the loss of each man in his turn is mourned

in each remaining heart.

Service--honor--country

bound these men with lines too strong for breaking.

The link in the chain has been tested:

it beareth the strain.

--Lew Taylor, from Leaked from the Pail, 2003

c 2017 PL