The Answer to My Favorite Question...Why?

Why? asked the little boy beside me 

where I was just finishing touch-ups to a poem when he arrived!

Why do you do this?

Ah! my favorite question! I smiled to myself

while replying simply that its good for my heart and head because

making a poem makes them work (and pray) very, very hard!🙏

and because it helps me remember pieces of life I love...like you!

I do it to unlatch a door that else would seal forevermore

In verdicts of access denied as day is snuffed by eventide

…to forge from filament of time a sentimental bit o’ rhyme

And to capture the subtle toll of seasons winnowing the soul

…to create from a swollen brook impressions of a picture book

With clouds adrift on listless seas above a copse of leafless trees

I do it to attempt to find treasures cherished and underlined

To seize spring’s youthfulness that plays in melting snows and longer days

…to bind, though we are far apart, the tender tendrils of the heart

And make each other feel at home in the kind kinship of a poem

…to carve a keepsake from the fray of gorgeous glints of yesterday

To waken from forsaken veldt how mother’s smooth, starched apron smelled

I do it to embrace the way the hand of time turns tresses gray

To learn the purity of joy taught by a little girl or boy

To try to frame, poetry-kissed, beauty, never wasted, oft missed

To make the most of now and here before its sparkles disappear

To snare in syllable, the hue of pictures time cannot undo 

Of blush and blue, green-gold run rife in mementos of love and life

To clasp the hemline of a robe that trails through ages of this globe

And with whispers of poetry hear Someone ask, 'did you touch Me?'

© Janet Martin