The Ink of (February) Poetry

I LOVE the shadow-art of February!

Blue sketches on white sweeps...

Ps.143:5

I meditate on all Your works;
I [b]muse on the work of Your hands.

 

The ink of poetry runs blue where February’s shadows scrawl

A minimalist’s sketch run through with whispers of a madrigal

The brunt of February days is something of an unsung gift

Its spartan hues seduce our gaze to trace each hill, rill, dell and drift

Evoking, somewhere deep within, a serenade that broods and soars

In rushing ebbs and flows akin to breakers felled on far-off shores

The ink of poetry runs wild in snowflake’s finest mustering

Biting the cheek of Summer’s Child with Old Man Winter’s blustering

While gilding nature’s crook and nook with glitter that melts to the touch

Thus, we must be content to look and worship God who authors such

Bountiful beauty for the muse, admonishing awe’s vagaries

For what is man that He should choose us to be beneficiaries

…where ink of phantom poetry runs boundless as galactic sweeps

And tickles the periphery of unplumbed, oceanic deeps

And fills thought’s quill with lyrical longings ink cannot satisfy

Where syllable on syllable treads the holy ground of reply

To four-season astonishment; each moment primed with beckoning

Because He who allots its bent is beyond mortal reckoning

The ink of poetry runs rife as February’s shadow-art

The laws of nature, love and life wreak havoc with the poet’s heart

The weight of would-be poetry presses the part that laughs and weeps

With endless possibility where poem upon poem sleeps

Till the thrill of blue shadow-scrawl on February’s afternoon

Wakens words to a madrigal that only poem-ink can tune

Janet Martin

Shadow-Forge

I LOVE September mornings, where shadows sprawl, tall across the waking land...

This, along with the memories of Lucy that people share helped inspire today's poem

John 9:4

I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day;

 the night is coming when no one can work.

It is Today; where rooms expand with gleaming opportunity

And grace extends a helping hand, because life is no Easy Street

All that has passed to yester-path is beyond reach; the part we see

(So potent in its aftermath) unfolds fresh favour 'neath our feet

It is today; a fleeting hold soon melded to Eternal Past

As moments, like nuggets of gold, mold all that we cannot undo

While forging with subtle finesse a sort of shadow we all cast

An indelible sacredness we ought to pay attention to

It is Today; nothing we say can un-happen Bygone unfurled

The best we all can do is pray and trust the One who knows/shows the Way

Because the shadow that we weave will follow us beyond this world

Of the Influence that we leave, through how we loved and lived Today

We cannot wish or wash away, or detach ourselves from it

By deeds we do and words we say, shadows of influence soft-fall

For better or for worse; life shapes that which transcends its transient flit 

A shadow sprawled across thought-scapes that those who yet remain, recall  

Janet Martin