Monday, November 16, 2015

Like Beggars with a Bit of Bread...(or Sonnet of Almost-winter)





The tree that waved its winsome, wind-song wand
In nature’s pride and joy is stripped of mirth
Its shadow like a gnarled, decrepit hand
Lies still upon the casket of the earth
The weather that once wore us thin with prayer
Then faded into flower-fragrant field
Revives the choristers of frosted air
With feather-strokes upon dawn’s dormant shield
The poet’s verve falters a little, then
Resumes his Task; to preserve Past with pen

We reconcile denial; Time is keen
Its charge a gauntlet that demands response
Where undeterred intent proceeds to wean
The limb of leaf and flower from its sconce
What fools we were to think we would succeed
In masterminding Time’s epitome
The hunger of its clock dwarfs our greed
Sure victor in the spoils of fantasy
And we are all poets as we survey
The aftermath of summer’s laughing day

Moment-montages startle thought where years
Can drain the poet’s pen of ink; its font
Of What Once Was, juxtaposed against fears
Of What Might Disregard our wish and want
The architect of Time and Space immune
To petty fancies; it employs its touch
In laugh-lines that love summer’s sanguine swoon
But soon surrender to winter and such…
The bard, torn between passion’s prose and rhyme
Cannot compose a poem that slows time

© Janet Martin


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