Of Impressions...a sonnet

There is no sturdy bulwark for the heart

To guard it from the boldness of your sigh

There is no sentinel to stand on guard

Or seal the echo dripping from the sky

Caught in the throat of midnight’s moody breeze

The elements of love and longing seep

For none can thwart the flow of memories

They rise and fall like billows of the deep

As yesterday puts on the muted robe

Of centuries that form the silent dust

The milkweed flings its silk across the globe

Heedless of where its silver seed is thrust

But we, the author of our private woes

Can never its full direness disclose

***

Wrapped in the velvet pleasure of your thought

Is all the goodness of this world I ask

It compensates for all the ‘what-is-not’

The mind is surely a mysterious flask

I lift my glass up to the weeping air

The wine of retrospect is bitter-sweet

The shadow-lull of summer’s empty chair

Are phantom waves receding from my feet

I trace the words you brushed against my cheek

Time cannot steal the laughter from love’s grin

Or snuff the whisper of the thoughts we speak

We seal their touch in vaults beneath our skin

For we, the keepers of love’s kind caress

Must cherish it with sacred tenderness

***

Life paints upon the canvas of our souls

Its intimate and panoramic art

Where none can hear the murmur that consoles

Or runs translucent fingers through the heart

And no one else can see the artist’s brush

The feathering of light against the dark

Or how the colors whirl and swirl and rush

In passion-surge where there is no bulwark

What color are the tears that midnight weeps?

Who shapes the imprint of our deepest sigh?

Or tears the lining from our hidden deep

Who lights the spark of wisdom in our eye?

We are the lone spectators of its whole

As life paints memories upon the soul

© Janet Martin