After All

PAD Challenge day 6: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “After (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. 

 

Sometimes I laugh, because after many interruptions the poem that began 

veers off course as I've forgotten where I was going with it.

so I try to gather the fray into some semblance of sense...

Sometimes 'somedays' that never will be

Must fill a line in poetry...

God, help the 'somedays' that remain

Never be a gift, granted in vain 

Sometimes it's good to count the things we did do, 

 ...not just the things we were going to and didn't!

After the days that turn to years

Where dusk by dusk, time disappears

To softly seal surrendered strains

In common cloth of what remains

Where Intention renews its vows

Of ‘Someday soon’, but then the Nows

Somehow prevail to strew the air

With shock-waves of moments there were

...to fill our stare with meek surprise

As we begin to realize

The deftness of dawn’s pirouette

Soon etched in onyx silhouette

…of moments met and tended to

Where words like 'yet still beg and woo

While weight of whispers chisels scars

Into the walls that cup dream-stars

And after our swarthy vow

To trick the touch of Time somehow

We learn, while growing old and small

We can’t out-fox time after all

...but make the most of moments lent
That soon play host to moments spent
And days that deftly drain a year 
 With nothing but the Now and Here

© Janet Martin