A Winter-dusk Ditty

A cloak of quietness and stars

Obliterates the view

Where first the flush of pastel bars

Turned into flannel blue

Then deepened into ebony

Until all that remains

Is someone looking back at me

In blackened window-panes

© Janet Martin

Winter Wind (or something like it)

He moans about the chimney-flue

And stokes a sudden flame within

They leap like shadows thin and blue

Like ballads from a violin

Where farewell feels like next of kin

And whispers keel and tug and woo

Upon the wave of dusky hue

That plays upon earth’s pallid skin

His kiss is cold and she is old

-er than she was, she knows full well

And no one told her of the smould-

-er that can fill dusk’s raven swell

With hugs that hurt too hard to spell

And all the words that would unfold

Get lost somewhere out in the cold

Like stars that sparked the dark and fell

© Janet Martin

Silver-white Postcard-night

The dark is blanched where full-moon light

Paints hill and dale all silver-white

As silent-silent falls the night

Like a still-life postcard

And dazzling on the listless lane

On boulevard and snow-starred main

Stirs something too hard to explain

Like echoes on a yard

Where once fair, carefree children ran

Strawberry lips and feet of tan

Before they wore woman or man

Encumbered with time's might

And standing where the day has gone

And stripped night naked to the bone

Save for Yore’s echoes falling on

A postcard silver-white

© Janet Martin

Of Something Underlying...

 Finally the weather has decided to give its forecasters some credibility;-) It snowed last night!

Spice of wood-smoke seasons dusk

Nip of autumn spent

Pervades breezes blue and brusque

Frost-husked filament

Flowers on a faded range

Stripped by hours bent on change

Tender is the wending way

Of Nature’s decline

White plush blankets somber gray

Cloaks stoop-shouldered vine

Tucks the ash of autumn’s flare

In a benediction prayer

Bracken bends beneath a kiss

Soft as thistledown

Swaddles springtime’s genesis

In diamond-starred gown

Crowns the crook of brook and limb

With a hallelujah hymn

Stirs a dirge in seasoned hearts

Feathers fond farewells

Though the letting go still smarts

Snow-frothed hills and dells

Work their magic in the mind

Leaving grief of leaf behind

© Janet Martin

 

Like Sonnets Dripping From the Sky

Sometimes upon the bluesy blur

Of day bending with twilight’s sigh

It seems I hear a sort of whisper

Dripping from the deep'ning sky

Window-scapes fade to nothingness

And so time’s new day disappears

Into Bygone's big emptiness

Of Now spun into after-years

And I am torn; love-worn, the art

Of hunger and fulfillment vie

To touch the part that stirs the heart

With sonnets slipping from the sky

© Janet Martin