The Sonnet of Still-song

The rain has ceased its miniature applause

Night’s hush is amplified in silver mist

Its scarf concealing blatant noon-day flaws

Intimidating North wind’s bully fist

The ragged edges of a fading day

Hesitate briefly; then slip to the deep

Tomorrow hovers, half a night away

Beyond the argent hills of tallied sheep

The silence plays a soulful melody

It rolls across the valley, hill and lea

The knife-edged blue softens its keenness now

As still of midnight rouses reverence

The rise and fall of longing sweeps earth’s prow

In passion searching for deliverance

Within this temple built of grass and sky

The shepherd of a thousand hills presides

Sacred extolment ripples in the sigh

Of rain-drenched willow-limbs and country-sides

Motionless, spectral legions sweep the sod

In secret thoughts of love and loss and God

The still-song of the darkness steals my breath

Its ghostwriter and maestro void of word  

Whist passages of time drip from the earth

In compositions felt rather than heard

A stray leaf wavers, circles on the air

Then spirals in an eighth note to the ground

It strikes the perfect chord, somehow, somewhere

I revel in the silver-threaded sound

Of still-song trickling from the astral stage

In choruses without author or age

© Janet Martin

After the sound of freezing rain

Pelting on the window-pane

The night’s still-song is amplified

Sweeping the misty country-side…