Monday, September 10, 2012

Of Dew-drops, Threads and other Transient Miracles





This can be read as individual sonnets or as one entire poem

We cannot place a cup beneath Time’s spout
To garner moments dripping to the air
September swoons; its triumph and despair
A taste of bitter sweetness in the mouth
Of what has passed, what is and what will be
Desire and dismay; dissonant blend
As we are torn twixt beginning and end
A soulful song of clashing symmetry
Who can foretell a season’s destiny
Of tender greeting and tearful farewell?
Love’s blissful joy is sorrow’s infancy
The nucleus of autumn’s parting knell
A bud cannot be hastened into flower
Nor bloom beyond its brief allotted hour

***

Soundless, the leaf-note drops from choirs spent
Silent the foot-falls of a summer pass
Yet, there is not a drop within the glass
We lift to snare its transient filament
The cup of grief and gladness overflows
Its wine pressed from life’s fair and finest field
Bravely we drink its blood and honey yield   
Clenching its agonies; the thorn, the rose
We cannot choose; the beggar or the king
What life imbues beyond our meager touch
The vanity of man can never clutch
The Power holding Time’s elusive string
But common flesh treads humble common sod
Where everything is nothing without God

***

The grasp of life’s profound fragility
Demands a keen awareness of the thread
That separates the living from the dead
Translucent strand holding eternity
September’s dew lays heavy on earth’s brow
Its dazzling shroud a brief and transient sheath
As Time inhales its gleam with eager breath
And we inhale the startling gasp of Now
This pulsing path will never reimburse
One moment of its pleasure or its pain
Thus, we absorb its tender-sweet refrain
Within its plaintive music we immerse
Our senses; faith and fear conflict, align
In this brief foot in front of foot design

***

The Storehouse of Time’s portioned mysteries
Dispersed in moment-drops upon this sphere
Sparkling in our laughter and our tear
Is but a microscopic speck of centuries
Our feeble minds can never comprehend
The brevity of this four-season glance
Though three-score years and ten we dream and dance
Or four score years and more; its wink will end
As summer folds into the arms of fall
And youth progresses into middle-age
To contemplate life’s turning of the page
With hastened disregard for summer’s call
We recognize anew life’s Higher Pow’r
For Time is but the dew on Heaven’s flow’r


© Janet Martin


4 comments:

  1. Love what you are doing with the blog man!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love’s blissful joy is sorrow’s infancy

    Circle of life!!! ??

    I agree with everyone... in all they have to say in praise of you...

    It is that phase in my life when I am enjoying your work immensely.... thanks :)

    leaf-note drops from choirs spent

    blood and honey yield

    common flesh treads humble common sod
    Where everything is nothing without God

    the thread
    That separates the living from the dead

    its dazzling shroud a brief and transient sheath
    As Time inhales its gleam with eager breath
    And we inhale the startling gasp of Now

    pulsing path

    we absorb its tender-sweet refrain
    Within its plaintive music we immerse
    Our senses; faith and fear conflict, align
    In this brief foot in front of foot design

    Storehouse of Time’s portioned mysteries
    Dispersed in moment-drops upon this sphere
    Sparkling in our laughter and our tear
    Is but a microscopic speck of centuries

    brevity of this four-season glance

    Though three-score years and ten we dream and dance
    Or four score years and more; its wink will end
    As summer folds into the arms of fall
    And youth progresses into middle-age
    To contemplate life’s turning of the page
    With hastened disregard for summer’s call
    We recognize anew life’s Higher Pow’r
    For Time is but the dew on Heaven’s flow’r

    I stand in ovation for you along with some of the lines that stood out tall for me ! ;0

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, We can't exactly place a cup beneath time's spout
    And will never to be able to capture it the way time hands itself out to us

    we can't in the real sense and in the sense you mean

    transient , evanescent , fragile .... our lives. Faith keeps us going , even tremulously.... God's own

    ReplyDelete
  4. I seriously have tears and you are so very kind. This poem really came from my deepest passions! thank-you for feeling it!

    ReplyDelete

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