The Brightest Star in the Night Sky

Before and after thee, an infinity.
Life but a momentary thing
That dissolves in eternity.
Applause and glory, misbegotten,
Your memory long forgotten.

The directing mind alone a divinity.
The body a loathsome encumbrance.
To benefit others the nitty-gritty —
Everything else a wide circumference.

Dedicate your life to others, the mantra.
Dismiss pleasure and pain, a recanter.
Come back to the inner mind, a sanctuary.
Remember the one purpose eleemosynary.

He wrote to himself not to forget,
Keep to the singular purpose dead set.
The brightest star in the night sky, Sirius,
That’s the immortal Marcus Aurelius.

All poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

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You Visit Me Now and Then

You visit me now and then.
A similar smile or glance or gate —
It can be anything, at any time, simply fate;
And there you are, once again.

What bound us together,
It held us in its grip,
Where is it now, once so strong, once forever?
Like a memory of a foreign land,
Just a passing dream turned to sand.

I went back to our home,
And there were strangers living there.
They took no notice of my stare.
How could they know?
Why would they care?

They gave me pause.
They made me wonder,
Is theirs to be only a dream
In time’s endless stream?

Only a dream.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

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Your Mind, Not Your Own

There is no limit to its chatter;
It jumps about like a jack in the box.
In the barely perceptible a constant clatter,
The mind is a wily red fox.

It rambles where it may;
You really don’t have a say.
Round and round and round it goes;
You can’t douse it with a hose.

Count your breaths one, two, three;
It will just shout with glee.
But if you focus on nothing more,
You may show it the door.

Yet, try as you might,
This little devil, a wild horse,
It leaps and creeps and sneaks about,
A primal force.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

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Rhyming Emily

Just give Emily a rhyming dictionary
To work in her bedroom monastery,
A wondrous gift to someone solitary,
An endless source of fun diversionary.

Happy as a clam this rhyming visionary.
What a golden mine of vocabulary
She would have found this lapidary,
If only someone had been her emissary.

What she would have done salutary.
Verbal needlepoint even more extraordinary.
We would all have been the beneficiary
Had Emily had the damn dictionary!

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story