March Midnight

Cold darkness drips where daylight slips

To past’s infinity

The deepening of dusk’s offspring

Obliterates earth’s lea

How restless seems a dreamer’s dreams

Eager for spring’s respite

Yet cannot leap beyond the deep

Of March’s mute midnight

It probes the tears for vanished years

Searching from star to star

The tenderness of youthfulness

A shadow faint and far

Where longing is the ecstasy

Of things once held, then lost

And having is the agony

Of suffering love’s cost

The brook that sings where summer flings

Her leaf upon its sweep

Will stilly slip from winter’s grip

To tune the midnight deep

Its gypsy wind croons wild yet kind

Harmless, but I am told

It whirls and twirls our little girls

Across childhood’s threshold

The unclad arch of midnight March

Sighs for spring’s softer sash

Yet we are torn twixt it and morn

Where thief and thinker clash

As give and take of moments break

Across a phantom beach

And one more day is brushed away

To ports beyond our reach

© Janet Martin

Our 'baby' turns thirteen tomorrow ! oh my...