Ode To Morning and Mercy

 (An ice-world photo from a few weeks ago:)

The pale sweep of dawn’s deep adheres

Triumph of daybreak over dark

It ushers its galactic arc

Across this spark of toil and tears

Where seasons splay then lay their shroud

Beneath the fray of feathered cloud

…as gold and gray, laughter, lament

Affects and infects mortal mind

The utter reach of thought designed

To rue what none can circumvent

From this hard clod of human hurt

Man, shod with little more than dirt

 …stirs from his slumber to behold

The resignation of the stars

As lo, upon yon eastern bars

A sea rushes where heights unfold

In blushing gold then pours far-wide

To wash the world with morning-tide

…and renders from Splendor’s Embrace

Midnight’s reprieve where frames of dust

Imbued with Soul and wanderlust

Struggle to trust a God of grace

That breaks the manacles of night

And wills its wake with morning light

…and the wherewithal to embark

Upon the pomp and circumstance

Of rigid rod and flushed romance

Before the curfew of the dark

Embellishes time’s little bowl

And keens Death’s Marksman to its Whole

…then, lest by quest of less than best

Time’s traveler misunderstands

This Thing that pours from mercy’s Hands

Whereby these sighs are cursed and blessed

We all would be all the more wise

To trust the Dictator of skies

…and never ask for more than this;

That He will guide and keep and stay

Lest unlearned passion leads astray

Look, what a splay of grace this is

Where the pale sweep of dawn adheres

God’s mercy to Time’s vale of years

© Janet Martin

 It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.

Lam.3:22