I'm blaming this poem on the moon...and other muse-like murmurs.
The full-moon hid by drooping lid of midnight’s charcoal-tinted
verge
Ignites a toll within her soul that rolls like sea-song’s
glinting surge
Across stilled sweeps where moon-glow seeps from hoary
heights to shadowed deeps
Her heartbeat feels the velvet heels of yester-reels in
bounds and leaps
And transports her, through silver blur back to the
murmur of a place
No tender tug to strip the hug as past and present
interlace
To pluck heart-strings of peasant kings with feathers
from the wings of Flight
Where boys and girls like noise and pearls tripped
through Her World and out of sight
She tips the flask that melts the mask that humble task
and smile defend
And lets the ink that poets drink become a confidante and
friend
The march of time in stiff-starched rhyme ignites a pantomime
of tears
That fills the arc of moon-brushed dark with spark and
ash of yester-years
The language of our utmost love covets the perfect flow
and form
But breaks through bars in salty stars and takes the
silent night by storm
Where naught can quell the soundless swell where Thought is caught in the riptide
Of tick and tock and click and lock, of clocks and closing
doors flung wide
The moon has slipped into the crypt of onyx-dipped
oceanic wave
The quiet aches where muffled breakers crash across time’s
fresh-turned grave
Where what we have must always brave the raven stave
farewells evoke
To poke the art pressed to Her heart with stings that
smart like salt and smoke
© Janet Martin
