Spring Morning

The last couple days have been gloriously sunny (though still a bit cold in the evenings) and teasing hints of Things To Come are slowly rising in the air and trees and people. I feel it's about time, then, that I brought out my first spring poem of the year. I dearly love winter, and the quiet, cozy comfort that it brings, but we live always in the cycle of the seasons, and it is fast approaching the time of the wide and verdant days of summer. This poem is a sonnet of sorts - though not in the strictest sense - and also somewhat of a counterpart to a previous poem, 'Daybreak.'


Spring Morning

The sun, ascended to its seat above the earth

upon a coil of eternal care,

extends its lambent arms in full and fiery birth,

where feathers float so freely on the air

and mistral morning clouds recline in waning girth

to consecrate the haloes in their hair.

Then here, below, bedecked, each flower lifts a crown,
a congregation, spread about its feet
of grasses bent with dew and bees in banded down,
who gather for the sacramental sweet
of life enlivened by the lucid stellar gown
that rests upon the land in lush replete.

So spring has woken with a royal trumpet blare,
as winter makes a reticent retreat.

The Ivy

I've been desiring, for a while, to write poetry that is not about myself, but the world around me. Inspiration is always difficult to come across, though. One cannot force it, but must wait until the moment strikes. And so I waited. And waited. Then, just the other day, I saw the most wonderfully ragged growth of ivy climbing up a brick wall, and knew I had to say something about it. There was just too much beauty to ignore. This is what came out, and while it has little to do with the actual wall of ivy I saw, it does attempt to draw on something true, however little it may be. It's a bit short; I wish I could have taken it further, but I couldn't see where to go after the third verse.

The Ivy

The creep and cleave upon the stone,

laid out in ancient line,

calls quietly to earth and bone,

to storm and salty brine,

from spidered hands that hold the cracks

and twist upon the jar,

that see the shell for what it lacks

and wage a lonely war

with root and stem and branch and leaf

against the elder wall,

where growth ascends upon the grief

and carries over all.

Silence and Sound

This poem is a perfect example of how my mind runs in cycles. Not only is the rythmic structure very similar to my last post, but I even borrowed some of the images and rhymes, and without realizing it at the time. Yet somehow, the subject matter still manages to be wildly different. Essence over accident, I guess. Also, if you hadn't noticed, I've been playing around with repetition of words lately, primarily thanks to T.S. Eliot, the master of unrepetetive repetition. I hope my early attempts aren't too obtuse. I prefer the surgeon's knife over the blunt ax, but it's hard to be objective about one's own writing.


Silence and Sound

You spoke, and speaking bared the blade
that turned the flesh away from bone
and stole a heart, so sorely paid
in purchase of a pleasant tone
to rub this aching ear aright,
then burden with a baseless fright,
like moss that creeps upon the stone,

spun of the threads that chance to be
and dissipate upon the air,
that spread uncertain certainty
within the fabric, woven fair
by hand, and tongue, and time unchained;
a painful pleasure for the pained,
who fails to ever find the tear.

Yet how could I subdue the sound
that sends the agony, acute,
upon the mind in pulse and pound
that measured days cannot dilute.
For me, the only greater fear
than suffering the words I hear
is that, one day, you will be mute.