Friday, September 16, 2011

Ode to a Rainy Late-Summer's Eve (edited re-post)


The cold rain hastes the ending of a day
The dark pine moans within its weeping knell
The landscape dims in folds of cobalt-gray
Beneath the tolling of the evening bell

The absence of the lusty cricket choir
Magnifies the musky sense of gloom
Hovering o’er the garden’s silent bower
Heavy with the parting of its bloom

Now fades the sky-line in the gathering eve
And now the dark and daylight intertwine
Until the dark prevails; light slips beneath
The edge of dusk on the horizon line

The night lies dormant in this solitude
Save for the leaf clinging with muted breath
To sodden arm of birch or maple wood
Before it sleeps in cradles of the earth

The cold rain hastes the ending of the day
Profluent sonnet drifting o’er the lee
As remnant sighs of summer slip away
To grace the silent shores of memory


Janet Martin

5 comments:

  1. Love that: "silent shores of memory."

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  2. I slip in here at night, just before I go to bed, to see what new joy you’ve left. In my poetry, I prey on emotion, you prey on beauty, so different are our styles. My poetry can leave spots of bare, exposed pain, so I come here for this, where you ‘grace the silent shores of memory.’ I find going to sleep after reading a poem with clear, yet complex, phrase structure; uncommon words of meaning and depth, and perfect rhyme to be so relaxing. After my fix of beauty, my mind is freed of all troubling thoughts. I drift off with bits of verse shining like a beacon, guiding my dreams. Thank you. I’ll sleep well tonight.

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  3. Thank-you Violet,
    It's funny how you can re-visit a poem written a year or more before, and suddenly see blatant needs of change...Or maybe it is me that has changed?:)! I had so much fun re-vamping this poem because the night before September rains bled from the eaves of the sky!

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  4. Mike,
    Your life and mine would be so vastly different if we began to compare notes, it is no small wonder that our poetry is as well. You obviously have experienced and seen so much in the years of being a cop...I have been a stay-at-home-mom for twenty years, spending much of that time at home because I also do child-care out of my home. I crave beauty...and God provides it every day if I open my eyes to see it. I love the raw emotion in your writing...that is what draws me to your poetry! I like that about poets..we are all so different, yet so alike.

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  5. Also Mike, I like your sense of humor:) The Tinted Window Bias:)...
    and I agree with the commentator who said that 'Hail, Good Centurion' is not simply a poem, it is a masterpiece!!!

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Thank-you for stopping by my porch! I hope you were blessed!