When He is Gone...#4

Poetics Aside Prompt; use 'when he is gone' in poem

When he is gone

Do we remember?

And do we pray

For he or (she) as they fight

For our freedom

Every day

When he is gone

Is he (she) a mythical ‘forgotten’

In a world far away?

As they lay their lives on the line

For our freedom

Every day

When he is gone

Do we beseech

To God as we pray

To keep and protect them as they fight

For our freedom

Every day

When he is gone

More than his dearly beloved

Ought to weep and pray

For sons and daughters
And mothers and fathers

Who risk their lives

For our freedom

Every day

© Janet Martin

When Old Man Winter is Gone

Poetics Aside Prompt; Use 'when he is gone' in a poem

When he is gone

The vengeance in the wind will wane

The bully-bluster

Will dissipate

And he will be gentle again

When he is gone

The quiet garden seeded now

With naught but dreams

Will suddenly be full of laughter

Where the frosted furrow gleams

When he is gone

The landscape, mute within his icy grip

Will surge with verdant velocity

As barren limbs burgeon

Beneath thawed finger-tips

When Old Man Winter is gone

We fling the shutters wide

To welcome the out-doors in

But now they are bolted against his pleasure

He tugs at the sky with a grin

© Janet Martin

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When He is Gone... #2

We cannot tell him then

Those words we ought to speak

Nor shake his hand or hug him

Or kiss his love-lined cheek

The ‘would-have-should-have’ ache

Of thoughts he did not know

Will not be there, if now we take

The time to tell him so

What good are accolades?

Or words, loving and dear

If we wait to express them

When he can no longer hear

Oh, tell him that you love him

Not upon a cold gravestone

But now; for all the words you speak

He cannot hear when he is gone

© Janet Martin

Poetics Aside Prompt: use the words 'When he is gone' somewhere in a poem .

When He is Gone...

Poetics Aside Prompt: use the words when he is gone anywhere in a poem.

When he is gone...

That laughing, little lad

The tree pines for those hours

That once they had

When he is gone

The air is heavy with a pall

Akin to absence of leaf-song

In the latter part of fall

When he is gone

That 'little boy blue'

The tree pines for his return

And perhaps his mother too

Janet~

Passage...

The air does not shudder

And nor does the grass

In spite of the haste

With which you pass

Surely, there ought to be

A kind of farewell

Like a soft melody

Or a tolling bell

But fluid, you slip

Or, do you climb?

An ethereal drip

Of passing Time

You do not wave

Or whisper good-by

But you become yesterday

As you slip to the sky

© Janet Martin

The Lord is our Shepherd

He leadeth our souls; kingdoms rise but to fall

Still the Good Shepherd knows His sheep; hears our call

And we shall not want; sustained by His breath

Beside the still waters; in the valley of death

His rod and staff comfort; in the presence of foes

He prepares a banquet; as love overflows

Surely goodness and mercy will ever prevail

For the Lord is our Shepherd and He will not fail

© Janet Martin

Psalms 23

Ode to the Muse

The Poetics Aside prompt invites us to use an old poet's poem and write a rebuttal; today I am drawn to Keats. Was it a vision or a waking dream is a line in Ode to the Nightingale

Was it a vision or a waking dream?

Alas, and was it thus my heart you stole

Wrapped as you were; the essence of a stream

When spring has loosed her from winter’s cajole?

And as you played my senses with your lure

And as my pulses surged in begging swoon

Did you intend my lone heart to procure?

Or, were you simply passing like the moon

Far off yet all consuming in your glance

While I, a meek and speechless love-struck girl

Invited you to laugh in reckless dance

As you remained aloof; elusive swirl

Then, well thy word is like a forlorn bell

And if I could I’d cheat my thought of you

But I know now that you know me too well

And to deceive you is the thing I cannot do

The silence tolls your present absence where

The air is filled with expectation’s pause

But still I wait; unwilling to despair

Of your return, and still I wait because

I do not care to breathe without your thought

Or write at last a sorrowful requiem

For thee; who came one night, or did you not?

Tell me;  was it a vision or a waking dream

© Janet Martin  

Where are the Songs of Spring?

Where are the songs of Spring; aye, where are they?

The notes that tune the dawn with jubilee

As shrouds of frigid respite melt away

And hope, a shrine renewed startles the lea

While we of dreams and duty part our lips

To drink the sun-warm nectar from a glass

Spilling its passion where the apple-blossom drips

Its fervor to the fresh, innocent grass

But now its naked arm is cold and stark

As day is swallowed early by the dark

Where are the songs of spring; aye where are they?

Muffled it seems by autumn’s drifting dirge

Or buried where the silent willows sway

As winter fills the air with silver splurge

The maestro of spring’s triumphant choir

Is resting now, a bittersweet repose

As we who seek the broken woodland spire

To warm our frozen fingertips and toes

Where choristers arrayed in virgin-white

Stand petrified against the onyx night

Where are the songs of spring; aye, where are they?

Where is that honey-trickle from a spoon

Where sunshine pools on moments now dull gray;

Sweet, golden luster on the afternoon?

Where are the songs of spring; the waking bloom?

The melody of bird and buxom breeze

To fill the earth, a gaunt and ghostly tomb

Of quiet homage to its memories

Ah yes, we know they wait, a calliope

Of splendor sealed as yet on heaven’s slope

© Janet Martin

Poetics Aside asks us to take a question asked by a favorite old poet and answer it in our own words. This question is a in a favorite poem of mine by John Keats entitled Ode to Autumn.

Ode to Autumn by J. Keats

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.