Ballad Of Autumn Dusk

 OctPoWriMo day 20; topic Overwhelmed. Form; Ballad

Oft upon dusk’s daily dying

Thought is like a troubadour

Strumming the harp-strings of summer

Where sweet summer is no more

Like a vagabond he pauses

Face turned west on wind-tossed heath

Where Time dons dusk’s deep blue shadow

Thought attends its daily death

Refrain;

Tell me; tell me, cries the drifter

Where the ash of summer lies

But Thought cannot hear the answer

In the wind-waif’s weeping sighs

Stark against autumnal darkling

Still-life skylines slip from view

Earth is like an empty cradle

That a little lad outgrew

Soft, the balladeer of twilight

Runs his fingers, star-to-star

Somewhere between dusk and midnight

Life and death like warriors spar

Refrain;

Tell me, tell me, cries the wand’rer

Where the dust of summer sleeps

But thought cannot touch the answer

Where the wind-waif sighs and weeps

Thought is overcome with sorrow

Sorrow overrun with joy

Somewhere in some far tomorrow

Summer is a little boy

Somewhere the Artist of Autumn

Smooths Thought's tear with frost-sparked glaze

Overwhelming earth with splendor

Overwhelming Thought with praise

Refrain:

Tell me, tell me, cries the poet

Where the silk of summer fell

From a well of fond-felled flowers

Thought finds words wind-waifs can't spell   

© Janet Martin

For the Love of Writing...

Sometimes thought is gale-grim and harsh

Brooding like winter where the marsh

Reed-studded, stiff and brittle-cold

Waits for kisses, gilt-green and gold

Sometimes thought torments, lonely-blue

Its Want a freight-train roaring through

Flesh and blood waste-land; stone-faced snake

Heaving where onyx oceans ache

Sometimes thought has no words to speak

Its utterance a tear-traced cheek

Laughter and love and longing meld

In groans of poetry withheld

But oh, sometimes thought is a pen

Warm and word-willing minstrel, then

The heart forgives those mind-respites

And holds the hand that writes and writes

 

© Janet Martin

Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, the ‘write’ words are withheld…

Sometimes to write the right words is war waged within.

 Writing requires talent and discipline and unyielding relentlessness, but it requires courage most of all.  Bill Coffey

...On Feeling a Feeling

…the value given to the testimony of any feeling must depend on our whole philosophy, not our whole philosophy on a feeling.

C.S. Lewis  TheReality of the Spiritual

I feel for you more than pen will allow

To proportion into word

And foolish-like sometimes, somehow

I forget that eons heard

The song of it long, long before

I was stirred by its melody

Darling, the more I hear of it

The more it vexes me

For I feel in its very bearing

All it can never become

And even as I’m wearing

Its ‘welcome home-sweet-home’

I feel an hour stealing

Its very breath from me

Yet, all I have is feeling

A stranger’s sympathy

© Janet Martin

Just e-mailed Melissa because I miss her...

Poet's Paradise...

Thought, like a roving, restless hand runs over curve and line

Searching, ah, ever searching for the right word to define

The agony of letting go, the paradise of touch

Thought, like a footloose wanderer still only holds so much…

Thought, sometimes as a pauper, sometimes debonair and fat

Fumbles and reaches like a hand not knowing where it’s at

Yet with practiced persistence it scavenges, overturns

The stars out in the heavens where an unpenned poem burns

Thought groans beneath the torture of an almost-kiss withdrawn

It melts beneath the murmur that a wayward wind can spawn

It lingers over echoes, yet dismisses in a sigh

The futile climaxes of hunger's hello and good-bye

Thought, chancellor and convict, troubadour and tyrant war

Where ever since the dawn of time poet and prudence spar

And almost it surrenders to jurisdiction of clocks

Yet cannot quite for it must find what only thought unlocks

© Janet Martin

"What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts"

~Thoreau~

Thought-streams

Perpetual discourse, this stream

Rushes in want, worry and dream

Accusation and worship surge

Filling mute fathoms with their splurge

Dawn, noon, wakeful middle-night

We bear the potence of their plight

Word touches word and shapes a thought

Faith, fear, hate, love and longing caught

Within its vortex endlessly

This torrent rushes to a sea

Where none can ever truly find

These oceans carried in the mind

…save for the thought that wears a noise

To tell of living’s grief and joys

Yearning, learning and wanderlust

Echoes in hollows filled with trust

Incessant urge from mystic deep

Word follows word until we sleep

© Janet Martin

Ever wish you could just turn them off...like in the middle of the night when they crowd away sleep?

What are your first 'thought-words' when you awake?
We ought to give careful thought to what we think...

Pray we have a constructive, healthy thought-stream...the pulse of everything else we do!

Of Bard and Battleground...

The battleground where wars are waged that only One can see

Can make or break the strongest bard in unformed poesy

The tear that never dims the eye, but burns the midnight oil

Slays legions only thought descries as enemies recoil

The sword where faith and hope takes wing would falter in despair

If want were satisfied with things and fate our only prayer

But peace and joy their gifts employ in kind simplicity

Its Giver helps us to destroy thought’s evil enemy

The rogues that bully branch and bush in winter-wild torment

Recruit allies to crush the soul in bitter, vile dissent

But, though the elements unleash their raging escadrille

Thought proves where its allegiance lies when battle-cries are still

The bard must bear, unlike the rest uncommon agonies

Sometimes the air cannot attest to heart-intricacies

Word-thirsty battle-cries reverberate without a sound

Where bard and pen must mitigate thought’s brutal battleground

© Janet Martin

Vexation of Thought

 

To what end then will you come, little thought

Teasing the mind with breath-flickers of light

Are you but a chasing of wind-whispered naught

Vexing bridge-builders and dreamers alike?

Sometimes you come to me; beggar within

Stripping my being of its wearied moil

You press; mighty torrent beneath silent skin

Weighing the meaning of life’s little spoil

Pleasure and torment succinctly align

Where is the fount from which you abound?

Gentle, yet ruthless, in formless design

Affirming, condemning without merest sound

To what end then will you come, little thought?

Circle of wanting, of wonder and will

Wielding your power in unscripted jot

As hands and feet your bidding fulfill

Understanding increases your void

Wisdom vexes what cannot be grasped

As I consider your passion employed

Only to fall like dust fragments at last

Apart from the One who instills mankind’s soul

Apart from a Knowing that cannot be taught

I could not bear the mind of this fool

Or the ineptness of my little thought

© Janet Martin

I'm reading in Ecclesiastes right now. This verse sums it up; all of life's vanity and chasing of the wind... for without him, (God) who can eat or find enjoyment? Eccles. 2:25 If what we do is simply an extension of thought seeking to please self we will never be satisfied.

Thought-gold

Though you are far away from me tonight

Thought is not bound by miles of land or sea

And you are not so far away from me

I reach to touch you in the words I write

The henchman of an hour never sleeps

But snuffs each moment as it slips to naught

He is not able to embezzle thought

Nor can he reach to steal the charge it keeps

For thought shapes the persuasions of the heart

The heart can hold a myriad of hours

And though it seems that we are far apart

I touch you like the sun kisses the flowers

Love cradles in its thought the finer art

Of hope and prayer and all that this empowers

The pilferage of moments fills the clutch

Of days, then weeks to years to centuries

The proof of their passage is memories

And only thought this corridor can touch

Tonight you press against the dark incline

Of midnight’s keen yet muted eloquence

And I embrace thought’s tender recompense

Of moments that have fallen from the vine

Then you are not so far away from me

And Time, though measured in numeric stance

Is powerless to bind a memory

Or chain its feet, forbidding us to dance

The law of love and loss and poetry

Unites us in its everlasting trance

We shoulder cares; perhaps the spoil of toil

The heart though it may break, seals the caress

Of joy and sorrow’s valiant tenderness

While tear’s are but the off-spring of its moil

Tonight, though miles declare expanses vast

Twixt you and I; we know the truth of thought

It travels beyond measured chart or jot

We are not far apart; thought binds us fast

The entities that fill our fumbling hold

Fall uselessly beneath the gilded clime

Where hearts embrace and lovingly enfold

The fragments of a moment’s lilt and rhyme

In treasure-troves of precious thought-forged gold

Its coffers gleam with offerings of Time

© Janet Martin