Gently Does the Night

Lately, I've allowed life to interfere with my writing, and as sometimes happens, living has chased away my muse and left me wanting. I've decided that I can't allow my living to define my life, so my new vow is to write every day, even if I write badly.
What follows is my first completed product of this vow.

This poem began with a few lines rolling through my mind, as my poems often do. The problem was that nothing further developed, so I decided to help it along by writing to form; hence, the sestina. By conforming to a particular pattern, I forced myself to extend my thinking. At least I am writing.


GENTLY DOES THE NIGHT

Gently does the night go into day
Like lovers parting lips  and giving way

To old familiar, tender pleasures.
Then boldly rising, Sun thrusts the moon

Careless from his bed into a weary world
Where nightime treasures end,

As all soft loving dreams will end
When shown beneath the harsher light of day.

The risen sun looks down on this cold world
And calls us forth to go about our way

And busy our time with no thought of the moon
Or other of those softer natural  pleasures.

Our days we fill with things that pass for pleasures --
Getting, spending, working with no end

Until the shly shining rising of the moon
Parts herself again to gentle out the day;

We live our lives of busyness this way,
Worn out and wearied in a wondrous world.

Our artificial, busy, concrete solid world
We fill with artificial, solid, concrete pleasures --

While harshened, hardened hearts along the way
Pull us only to a solid, hardened end,

Baking us with fire and heat like day
Solidifies his hold on earth and blurs the moon

Until the moon herself forgets she's Moon
And is subsumed into the brighter world

And blotted out by day.
Were there not times when natural pleasures

Triumphed in the end?
Were we not made to live another way?

The night herself can light a better way
If we would pause in wonder at a moon

That shines past concrete to the end
Of this harshened, heavy-hearted world

Devoid of pleaures.
The gentle light of night can blot the day

And put an end to life's unnatural way,
But only if each day we choose the moon's
Sweet sleepy treasure over a concrete world devoid of  pleasure.

Oh, Martha!

I feel compelled to put an asterisk beside this one and say that the "you" is not meant to be Jesus, although the story of Mary and Martha did spark the poem. While listening in church, I kept thinking that I know the better part, I just can't do it. I'm Martha through and through. (Working on the resentment thing, though. I promise.)

AND...I considered passing this off as an official Poetry Bus poem for the week, but I'm far too superstitious for that. The Puritans did a job on my head, apparently. You know, Sinners in the Hands, and all that. You might want to go to Rachel's place for this week's riders. Meanwhile, I'm counting on God's keeping his/her sense of humor!  ;-)






OH, MARTHA!

They tell me it's the better part.
     We're not supposed to think,
           Just sit there at your feet,

But try as I might, I can't
     Make my hair ripple
          Waves of welcome.

No, look hard enough,
     And you'll find me 
          Beside an open door;

I'm sneaking a smoke
     And thinking about the weather
          And what they'll want to eat.

I'm waiting for the microwave to beep.

The Bluest Bird

The Bluest Bird

The bluest bird I ever saw was in the middle of the road,

And I, going forty-five on a lane made for fifteen,

Couldn’t stop in time to take a good look, so a quick flit

Of true blue was all I saw lifting into the morning air.

Even I thought it strange that I managed to see the silver and blue

Of the can an oncoming driver lifted as he squeezed past

And the blue sky mirrored in another driver’s shades,

But the shade of the ruby breast on that bluest bird,

I missed, moving way too fast on a road not made for speed

On a silvery morning, missing, too, the tender notes

From a throat that could have lifted me high into a sky so blue

It might have hurt my eyes.