The rain has ceased its miniature applause
Night’s hush is amplified in silver mist
Its scarf concealing blatant noon-day flaws
Intimidating North wind’s bully fist
The ragged edges of a fading day
Hesitate briefly; then slip to the deep
Tomorrow hovers, half a night away
Beyond the argent hills of tallied sheep
The silence plays a soulful melody
It rolls across the valley, hill and lea
The knife-edged blue softens its keenness now
As still of midnight rouses reverence
The rise and fall of longing sweeps earth’s prow
In passion searching for deliverance
Within this temple built of grass and sky
The shepherd of a thousand hills presides
Sacred extolment ripples in the sigh
Of rain-drenched willow-limbs and country-sides
Motionless, spectral legions sweep the sod
In secret thoughts of love and loss and God
The still-song of the darkness steals my breath
Its ghostwriter and maestro void of word
Whist passages of time drip from the earth
In compositions felt rather than heard
A stray leaf wavers, circles on the air
Then spirals in an eighth note to the ground
It strikes the perfect chord, somehow, somewhere
I revel in the silver-threaded sound
Of still-song trickling from the astral stage
In choruses without author or age
© Janet Martin
After the sound of freezing rain
Pelting on the window-pane
The night’s still-song is amplified
Sweeping the misty country-side…
