Showing posts with label night. Show all posts
Showing posts with label night. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Catch Me If You Can


Away, away, ebbs break of day 
Dawn’s newest nuance flows 
Its height of bloom soon wooed away 
Like petals from a rose 


How soon, how soon the afternoon 
Folds up its gleaming fan 
And fills the shadows with a tune 
Of catch-me-if-you-can 


A-tsk, a-tsk, the brooding dusk 
Is like a clucking hen 
She spreads her wings over her chicks 
And draws them home again 

© Janet Martin 



 

Saturday, December 5, 2020

Quite a Day-and-Night Indictment

Sometimes dawn is a gray slate,


..and sometimes a scroll of molten pink and gold!


...but always the same God bestows!

Darkness recedes as daylight seeps from deeps unscathed by eyes 
The seamless sweep of moments metes new day’s virginal prize 
Time’s treasure trove of push and shove and Love’s stumble-pocked chase 
Is overflowing with the glowing Evidence of grace 

The darksome lid of Said-and-Did lowered and sealed its cask 
Where what seems hidden is soon bidden to some fellow’s flask 
There is a spigot in the frigate filled with gated shores 
And from the drum of Said-and-done its gravid gumption pours 

This breath of life is like a knife where strife and hunger test 
Its death-doomed roar with birth once more in tours form east to west 
Where Hope, abreast dawn’s maiden quest that soon begets farewell 
Will help us cope while moments slope toward Heaven or hell 

This daily grace none can retrace, laced with most Sacred Fact 
Is like a barge laden with Charge, life-at-large keeps intact 
Darkness recedes while Someone heeds the needs none can outfox 
Soul, hidden in a skiff of rag-thin skin, sutured by clocks 

Tick-tock, tick-tock, stitching and unravelling synchronized 
The boon of morning, noon and night, a schooner, Mercy-prized 
Its journey to, nay, through the grave, may seem sustained on sod 
But it is quite a day-and-night-indicted trek to God 

© Janet Martin 

Sometimes I like to take rhyming challenges to the limits...
It isn't perfect, but was still a thrill to try.

 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

“Vanity[a] of vanities,” says the Preacher;
“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
What profit has a man from all his labor
In which he [b]toils under the sun?4 
One generation passes away, and another generation comes;
But the earth abides forever.5 
The sun also rises, and the sun goes down,
And [c]hastens to the place where it arose.6 
The wind goes toward the south,
And turns around to the north;
The wind whirls about continually,
And comes again on its circuit.7 
All the rivers run into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full;
To the place from which the rivers come,
There they return again.8 
All things are [d]full of labor;
Man cannot express it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor the ear filled with hearing
That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.


Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:
Fear God and keep His commandments,
For this is man’s all.
14 
For God will bring every work into judgment,
Including every secret thing,
Whether good or evil.



Thursday, September 24, 2020

Little Women of Yesteryear





(my personal favorite version of Little Women is the one made in 1949)

Time always feels much older after dark 
After we pass the mark of middle age 
(though secretly we still feel like Jo March 
Behind the veil that falls o’er twilight’s stage) 
To hide the tears that love and longing spark 
Because some things no elements can cage 
Though we no longer hunger to embark 
On voyages that could turn back the page 

Still, we might dare to share half-openly 
Impressions outlined like shadows of ink 
Not brave enough to bare for all to see 
The letting go of places that we think 
Where what remains of what will be, will be 
In spite of what time seals in gold and pink 
Like envelopes containing poetry 
Collected in a vault beyond dusk’s brink 

…where Time always feels older when the cloth 
Of dusk is drawn across earth’s windowpane 
And all is dark save far-off silver froth 
Of stars to make us feel half-young again 
Where let’s admit it, you and I are both 
Jo March inside, unwilling to abstain 
From agonies half-pleasing and half-wroth 
And far too complicated to explain 

Maybe there is a lane where Laurie waits 
But we are far too old to go and see 
Lest while we roam the dark of night abates 
So we submit to sensibility 
And walk sedately with our wedded mates 
Acting ever so very properly 
No swinging or leaping o’er garden gates 
As we put on the person of Marmee


© Janet Martin 





Monday, November 4, 2019

Night Thoughts

PAD Challenge Day 4: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Night (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. 

"These are night-thoughts.
The day will wash them away"
Quote from; From Larkrise to Candleford 



Through chasms carved with what is not
They rush; frail flood-gates yield to thought
That daylight’s barricades had barred
But midnight’s maelstroms disregard
And would wreak havoc in the Place
That cups our mustard seed of faith

…for something about darkness wakes
A world immune to masquerades
It strips bravado down to size
As fear rallies its troop of lies
To thunder through thought’s sleepless form
With ‘what ifs’ agonizing storm

And were it not for prayer to keep
A Shepherd’s watch on thought-shaped sheep
And were it not for grace to guard
The fold those night-fiends disregard
We could not ward off wolves that wait
To break in and annihilate

So when I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord His watch to keep
And guard me from the beasts that lurk
When I have set aside my work
Where love and longing carve an ache
That sometimes night-thought’s overtake

© Janet Martin

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

August Nocturne








Over the earth seeps a somnolent sea
Washing the colours of day from the lea
Tucking the hollows and hills out of view
Beneath a blanket of dust-scented dew
Turning bright tincture to deep blue and gray
Brushing the world outside windows away
Snuffing last rays of daylight like a spark
Crescent moon hangs like a smile in the dark

Cricket song wafts; vibrating staccato
The night is soft like a black velvet throw
The heart is torn as dusk oozes away
For every night summer loses a day
Gathered like sheaves into Bygone’s vast bin
Until the harvest of August is in
Weaning the sedge of its sheen, green and blithe
Keening the edge of Has Been like a scythe

Stars froth the night like a grand Mystery
Big dipper held by a Hand we can’t see
All that we know off by heart disappears
Though night's artist is unchanged through the years
Dipping his brush into ebony stream
Painting his pictures while well-wishers dream
Tossing across every meadow and lawn
Diamonds to dazzle the dreamers at dawn


© Janet Martin






Saturday, December 1, 2018

Why I Am Still Awake...





Too much to tell before the bell of midnight chimes time's solemn toll
And all the walls that wore thin shawls of noonday skin are black as coal
And all the days of golden haze and green-grass chaise and gorgeous bloom
Have fallen prey to charcoal gray and strewn like ash to Bygone’s tomb

Too much to do before the hue of aural blue turns velvet black
Before the sweep that always keeps the moments scattered in its track
Before the door to Nevermore swings shut and turns what is to naught
And all we hear of This, my dear, is echoes in a world of thought

Too much to touch and taste and see where daylight dims too soon, it seems
And most of what we have and hold is tendered to yesterday’s dreams
And places too far-off to reach because of midnight’s soulful knell
As tomorrow becomes today and today turns into farewell

Too much to learn and teach and earn and preach and praise and warn and pray
...before the dusk is like a husk after morn-noon is shucked from day
Too much to live-laugh-love and let go, before oh, the hug-tug-war
Where soon the air will wear the whispers of what was but is no more

© Janet Martin