Midnight's Battle-wounds

The middle night is dark and deep and sages sleep while poets fight

Rife tides that never slumber but humbly beseech their hands to write

And so they do, sail out into a frost-fraught solitude where thought

Is stirred and drifts from word to word to find the very one it sought

The middle night is like a lake and moments break in ripples where

The frigate of vast centuries is harbored in its laden air

The undertows of highs and lows tug at a poet’s searching pen

To spill from quill the tempest-will of tug-of-warring minds of men

The middle night unbars the stars soldered by daylight’s polished poise

Now torrents of both loss and love thunder through thought without a noise

Then, softly falls upon the page, its madrigals of ageless age

Like blood-drops from the battle-wounds in wars that only poet’s wage

© Janet Martin