Where Darkness Like An Inkwell Taunts...

The night can keen beggarly want

And stoke the quill twixt fingers caught

The darkness like an inkwell taunts

The quiet with nothing but thought

The aptitude of thought can vex

Her best-laid plans of books and tea

Suggestions of surprise perplex

Slumbering mood with poetry

The mind is never still, it seems

One thought follows the next until

It sorts through matter-facts and dreams

To wanders past the window-sill

And what or where or who thought sees

Upon the transport of a sigh

Depends upon the brooding breeze

And how it strums its lullaby

The aftermath of middle day

The laughter of its afternoon

Falls up into the Milky Way

To spill from a star-dazzled spoon

The water-colored sky of dusk

Is hung upon a memory

The night can keen thought-streams of us

And vex the dark with poetry

Bygone can never bar the air

Thought tends to trespass at free will

Where darkness is a thoroughfare

For the trespasser with a quill

© Janet Martin