Do Not Disturb So Easily

Do not disturb so easily
The dead who lay beneath the sod;
Unknown to those who live and breathe,
Forgotten by all is the life they trod.

Stroll reverently among the graves;
This no place for light frolic or jest.
Remember soon will come the day,
You will too lay there among the dead.

Do not disturb so easily,
Those, who in rest, await the Day.
While you walk so blithely,
Giving no thought about your way.

Do not disturb so easily
The dead who lay beneath the sod.
The day will come when you too,
Will also go to meet your God.

J. William Newcomer
September 28, 2015 © All rights reserved.

memory...

As I contemplate the years;
How swiftly they flew by,
All those long gone younger days
From once upon a time.

The history we have lived,
The stories we could tell;
Lingering in our memory
Of heaven, earth, and hell.

Feeling it keener every day,
Our mortality drawing near;
Every breath and step we take;
Becomes so very much more dear.

The things we did or did not do;
All the choices we have made;
Have set the pathway of our life;
Steered the course of our life's way.

Our path entwined with many paths
Of those we knew along the way;
Shadows and ghosts in our memory,
Some forgotten, but many stayed.

Hither to the Lord has helped me
Unto this time of life I've came.
To the end He will be with me,
All praise and glory to His name.

J. Willaim Newcomer, October, 2012

"The Alchemist" by Patricia St. John

My Master an elixer hath that turns
All base and worthless substances to gold.
From rubble stones He fashions palaces
Most beautiful and stately to behold.
He garners with a craftsman's skillful care
All that we break and weeping cast away.
His eyes see uncut opals in the rock
And shapely vessels in our trampled clay.
The sum of life's lost opportunities,
The broken friendships, and the wasted years,
These are His raw materials;
His hands rest on fragments, weld them with His tears.
A patient Alchemist! --He bides His time,
Broods while the south winds breathe, the
North winds blow,
And weary self, at enmity with self,
Works out its own destruction, bitter slow,
Our gallant highways petered out in mire,
Our airy castles crumbled into dust,
Leaving us stripped of all save firece desire,
He comes, with feet deliberate and slow,
Who counts a contrite heart His sacrifice.
(No other bidders rise to stake their claims,
He only on our ruins sets a price.)
And stooping very low engraves with care
His name, indelible, upon our dust;
And from the ashes of our self-despair
Kindles a flame of hope and humble trust.
He seeks no second site on which to build,
But on the old foundation, stone by stone,
Cementing sad experiance with grace,
Fashions a stronger temple of His own.

An Ordinary Woman’s Extraordinary Faith - The Autobiography of Patricia St. John; Harold Shaw Publishers, Wheaton, IL; (1993) pgs. 297-298

Well May the Heavens Weep

Well may the heavens weep
On such a day as this.
When such a one we loved so well
Is laid in the ground's abyss.

Well may the sky with tears drip down
For the one we so adored.
Oh death will not be so proud
On the resurrection morn.

(Copyright © October, 2010. All rights reserved.)

Babylon

THE CHILD alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.
Truth and Reason show but dim,
And all’s poetry with him.
Rhyme and music flow in plenty
For the lad of one-and-twenty,
But Spring for him is no more now
Than daisies to a munching cow;
Just a cheery pleasant season,
Daisy buds to live at ease on.
He’s forgotten how he smiled
And shrieked at snowdrops when a child,
Or wept one evening secretly
For April’s glorious misery.
Wisdom made him old and wary
Banishing the Lords of Faery.
Wisdom made a breach and battered
Babylon to bits: she scattered
To the hedges and ditches
All our nursery gnomes and witches.
Lob and Puck, poor frantic elves,
Drag their treasures from the shelves.
Jack the Giant-killer’s gone,
Mother Goose and Oberon,
Bluebeard and King Solomon.
Robin, and Red Riding Hood
Take together to the wood,
And Sir Galahad lies hid
In a cave with Captain Kidd.
None of all the magic hosts,
None remain but a few ghosts
Of timorous heart, to linger on
Weeping for lost Babylon.

(Robert Graves (1895–1985). "Fairies and Fusiliers". 1918)

Another Little Boy

To my 3 year old Grandson Jorgen William Eggebroten,

Another little boy
Has come into our lives.
To watch him growing up
Gives us real delight.

A bundle of energy
He brings into our day.
With a torrent flood of words
To accompany his play.

He chases his big brother,
Both roaring with delight,
Tumbling and wrestling,
As they pretend to fight.

A delight it really is
To have another little boy.
May he in years ahead
Always bring us joy.

(J. William Newcomer © May 7, 2010. All rights reserved.)

Grandpa’s Little Boy

To my 1 and a half-year-old Grandson Tyrel Albert Eggebroten.

I finally got my little boy
I’d waited for so long.
With curly hair and happy face,
And in his heart a song.

So much he tries to tell us.
So much he has to do.
So lively and so pert
Is the smile he gives to you.

I finally got my little boy,
And thankful I will be.
My heart is filled with joy
For the boy God gave to me.

(J. William Newcomer © February 11, 2003. All rights reserved.)

Grandpa’s little Girl

To my 3-year-old Granddaughter Shauna Rose Eggebroten.

What are you thinking little girl?
In your little mind,
Behind those green-gray eyes,
Seeing the world so differently then I.

What pictures do you see?
And sounds do you hear?
So flooding your mind…
You put up walls, closing doors
To the deluge from outside …

Do you know we love you?
Can you cipher what we say?
Are there things you want to tell us,
But somehow you can’t explain?

We love you little girl.
In our lives you have a part.
Whatever comes your way,
You’re always in our heart.

(J. William Newcomer © February 11, 2003. All rights reserved.)

We Tell the Stories

We tell you the stories
So you will know
How it came to be.

We tell you the stories
So they not be lost
To collective memory.

You want to know why we are the way we are,
Or maybe you do not care.
We tell you the stories anyways;
You need to know we were there.

The things we saw with our own eyes
Have become now's history.
We tell you the stories,
And pray and hope,
Perhaps someday you will see.

(Copyright © April 2010. All rights reserved.)

To Charlie Brown, B.B.

Why look at me Sir Charlie Brown?
Afraid your next meal may not be found?
With your tail a wagging back and forth,
Like Oliver Twist, “May I have more?”
Soulful brown eyes so sad to see,
Looking up while begging to me.

It was in the pound you were found,
And your health was most unsound.
The Vet we took you then to see,
(No dog from the pound is really for free.)
Doctored and nursed, you soon got well,
Such is the story we now can tell.

Rough life you have holding down the floor,
And chasing squirrels in the great outdoor.
Not one you’ve caught if the tale be told,
While up in the trees it is you they scold,
With your Beagle nose to the ground,
Running like a maniac all around.


A brainless Beagle you always will be.
(Any you have is in your nose you see.)
Why we got you I don’t really know,
But here you are, living in my home.
Man’s best friend you’re suppose to be,
And a friend you have become to me.




Copyright © December 2006. All rights reserved.

as though a goddess

It was as though you were a goddess,
Though I know you mortal be,
And both time and age
Will take their toll on thee.

A moment of beauty and youth,
As if a glimpse of eternity;
What may have been had not
Our parents eaten from the tree.

Time takes its toll on us all
In this broken world you see;
But in a brief moment of youthful beauty
Was a hint of earth redeemed.

(Copyright © 2009 All rights reserved.

(In this poem I am using the word "goddess" in the way I believe C.S. Lewis would have used it.)

Fragments

Fragments of each other’s life.
Some brief encounters here,
Brief conversations there.
Fragments and parts,
Hints of who we really are.
Impossible it is
To encompass the whole
Of each other’s life.
Like an incomplete puzzle
Gaping holes and pieces missing.
Our imagination left to fill in the gaps;
Often incorrect and incomplete.
We are left with only
The fragments of each other’s life we hold.
Fragments taken in prayer
To the One who knows the whole.
Prayer for one another
Springing from the fragments
Of each other’s life we hold.

(July 20, 1998, copyright © 1998, All right reserved.)

Lives Touching Briefly

Lives touching briefly,
Touching one another for a moment of time.
Passing on after that brief moment
To their separate ways;
Not always knowing
What has been left in each other’s heart.
Nor how deep such things can go,
Down into the very depths of soul.
Each living with choices each has made.
Each living the time Providence has gave.
Each to that duty to which God has called.
Very rare it is indeed
Such paths to cross again in life.
What is left is memory,
And that place deep down in the heart.
That longing for Eternity,
When all of His a heart ever loved
Are again together, to never part.

(May 30, 1998, copyright © 1998, All right reserved.)

Seperate Paths

Many years ago it was,
The paths of our lives
Went along side by side,
Along the way God gave each to trod.
Part of each other’s life it seemed,
Sharing hopes and dreams
And other things that we believed.

I can remember though,
When in my mind I could see,
Our paths were to part to their separate ways.
Yours up the side of a mountain steep,
But I along a lower place
My path would take my feet.

And as I saw it in my mind,
It actually came to pass.
Our paths did part.
No more seen or heard.
Paths parting with hardly a word.

I often wondered over the years
How your path has been.
What joys, what tears,
What dreams and fears,
Your path to you did send.

I still have some confidence
One day before His glorious throne
Our paths will come together again.
As each of the paths He gave us to trod,
Will bring us to His Home.

(August 1, 1998, copyright © 1998, All right reserved.)

Days Gone By

I remember way back when,
A long, long time ago.
Young we were and off we went
Into the world to go.
Our paths went here.
Our paths went there,
Life did so quickly fly.
And now a lifetime latter,
We remember days gone by.

(Copyright © February 26, 2010. All rights reserved.)