Best Matins Poems
Skylarks Call Across Light of Morning 1-11-23
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Skylarks Call Across Light of Morning
“Skylarks call across morning light”
After cold quiet stills laughter
In the deep shafts of ebony
Matins roll away stubborn stones.
Daylight spins on dawning’s spread wings,
Skylarks call across morning light,
“A kiss from the rose on the grey”
Sun and fading stars paint the dawn.
“Shattered grace falls in jagged nights”
Yet morning chimes guide blinded eyes
Skylarks call across morning light
From somewhere behind the rainbow.
In the dawn, love holds out a hand -
“Echo in the sounds of silence” -
Arms remember holding magic,
Skylarks call across morning light.”
“Skylarks call across the morning.” From Ash Groves – A Welsh folksong
“Kiss from the rose on the grey” Seal from Batman Forever
“Shattered grace falls in jagged nights.” From Poet’s album - Jericho Road
“Echo in the sounds of silence. Paul Simon - Sounds of Silence album
Categories:
matins, bird, care, love, morning,
Form:
Quatern
Elegy – 7-17-24
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Elegy for Old Growth
Through measures of metered melancholy
The tattered winds sing a rent elegy,
A pensive wail for pristine old growth,
A drifting chant in pure pitch of final farewell –
The mute tongue howls in eulogy
For virgins of a thousand turns around the sun
For helpless giants surrendered in atonal sacrifice.
Gentle titans with feathery boughs lifted their faces
To embrace misted melodies of summer and winter snows
Forest zephyrs sang lullabies for sparrows
Nesting in their rustling wombs
Then shared the secret lyrics of their song
With robins sheltered in their lofty grace of red bark
In evensongs, matins and spring symphonies.
The myrrh of burial mixes with their lingering fragrance
In desolation and in their exposed flesh,
Nude hillsides of purple rage
Scream in final dirges of farewell
Modulated into anthems sung to saplings in circles of renewal
Little ones, like half steps, change elegies to odes
The threadbare zephyr now chants paeans to remember.
Categories:
matins, death, life, nature,
Form:
Elegy
Letter chosen "V"
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Virtuoso
Carnelian dawn reflects red sun rising,
Mirrors glow of vermillion flycatchers,
With scarlet plumage, so mesmerizing,
Dawn’s songbirds – virtuoso stature.
Flight song resounds through the still morning mists,
Woodland thickets embrace the day song,
Artists on wings with bright feathers flame kissed
Warble sweet aves on garnet birdsongs.
Vigil for daybreak in tones cinnabar
Matins’ maestros in morning’s sung prayers,
Amber strains from coquelicot popstars,
Lauds for the Daystar ring through newborn airs.
Cloaked in vermillion at evening's first light,
Songbirds wait to sing in red-orange delight.
Categories:
matins, bird, morning, song, star,
Form:
Sonnet
Awakening Perpetually
by Odin Roark
Awakening perpetually knows well
Perfection’s tuning fork disquietude,
Its awareness that any off-key meandering
Can cloud over a caressing sunshine rising,
Sour a dawning’s gardenia fragrance.
One reaches skyward with morning’s extension,
The opening of shuddered windows,
Inviting breezes to find purpose
Among slumber’s expended air,
The body’s unwearied resilience.
About the room
Timeless ghosts bow heads and implore with stretched arms,
Aroused by their history’s carillon, matins and lauds,
Even as cobblestone passage below traffics today’s gluttonous appetite,
Fulfilling its locust-like consumption,
Unabated by cacophony’s garrulous conceit
Propelling a different consciousness
Self-destructing by tourismic mayhem.
But…
To step forward and lean on man’s balcony of hope,
Is to lift weary eyes above the clutter below
Onto rising light’s warm-colored horizon,
To give one’s tuning fork its earned reward,
The sense of harmony and melody
Being born of another day.
Such is the embrace of dawn’s meaning,
The anticipation of canvas to paint,
Verses to write,
Preludes to compose.
For lest we forget,
Awakening remains perpetual,
Whether for man, creature, seedling or flower.
It asks only to be honored.
Categories:
matins, senses,
Form:
Free verse
Don your hat, grab your cape and walk with me,
let's stalk the streets, take in the frosty air
on cobbled lanes, necromancing we see
confined people of shade suspended there.
They strain against the lock, peer through the rail
of shadow gate where fear and pain collide,
destined to seek the path of peace and fail,
eternal slumber forever denied.
PC Moss walking the beat on last patrol
footsteps in Lock-up yard in echoes sound
in concert with the chains of fettered soul
never to seek solace beneath the ground.
Matins at the Friary can still be heard,
the brotherhood who walk, missals in hand.
In moonlit armour, Roman legions stirred
on Chester Green they march by night's command.
Take heed now of the child's plaintive cry
hurled from Silk Mill tower in ages past
unanswered call to mother, years go by
languishing, no comfort to the last.
These fragile frames of ours will end their days,
we live in hope for immortality
We know not what 'twixt here and heaven lay
so don your hat and cape, and walk with me.
Derby: known to paranormal investigators as 'the dead centre of England'.
For contest- Midnight
Categories:
matins, night,
Form:
Couplet
I feel the warmth of early morning sun.
The blackbird, singing in the cherry tree
Entrances all with matins just begun –
Ethereal plainchant, plangent melody.
The snow-white blossom hides a darkling bird
From eyes that would discern this source of joy.
Though nothing’s seen, his heartfelt song is heard,
His mate to charm; his rivals to annoy.
Charmer of worms, I see your yellow beak
Now opening to disgorge divine enchantment
To humans, who the charms of Nature seek,
In troubled times, for solace and contentment.
Your pastoral serenade surrounds me all day long;
The sun is sinking fast, and so, to evensong.
Categories:
matins, bird, nature,
Form:
Sonnet
Voyagers, convene thyselves to return, among us...
Caesura, crown nigh clod, a sylph unwept,
elision thy silhouette, meno thy minuet...
Thine late occurence on thee, wake of cerise sand
Thou belief, like a billow, upon your whitish cheek,
'Twas marina bay, her twaddle a garb of mer,
A henchman docks, thy quay, girdles stymie ebbs,
but he cannot dream aloft a dream she confers...
O'er to woo hand in hand, thou overture unto Sirocco,
Plagues thy pirate ships, quakes men with mar,
His and his only demand, an aegis for lagoons amidst...
Once deluged, sun askew above, one abyss of bagatelles
Deters a tocsin, feign mooting mammals, thy kin a boon,
Aquatica, thee damsel for diminuendos, spurns thy sire,
Her gentle mettle, calls thee, His fervor season calentures...
Aloof thy celestial kisser, nay thy nine, vim domiciles solitary
Doomed skulls ravish, an age id by ice, culls thee, for chastity,
Some may not know, we died to have our love live, over and again,
Amity vows posy littoral seaflowers, buoys colonnades of adventure...
thence, cradles await upon matins, sail thy Oceanus genesis, amen.
Categories:
matins, adventure, happiness, imagination, mother,
Form:
Iambic Pentameter
Father....where were you when the Jews were gassed,
and countless slaves, whipped and slashed?
Father....where are you when the child-killers roam,
forever now from mother’s home
Father....where are you when your priests abuse the young,
in your house when matins sung
Father….will I burn in hell, have I made you frown,
…. will your angels hunt me down?
Father....I’m dying of this dread disease, so would you put my mind
at ease?.. just be a mate, now tell me straight, but please Lord don’t pontificate.
13/10/15
Categories:
matins, god,
Form:
Free verse
martins in mud cups
morning song of birds echo ~
priest saying Matins
Categories:
matins, song,
Form:
Senryu
I love my solitary matins,
morning excursions and incursions
toward simply divine places,
reading to hear voices from my past
inside prophetic choices
occupy BeLoved Community futures.
In this sacred space
we sing full time health resolutions,
ego therapeutic gospel by day,
and dream Gaia's good-wealthy news
remixed by night
Regenerating each dawn's richly choired
multicultural anthem
climaxing just as SunGod
kisses EarthMother's rich-soiled face
of graceful embrace
for all Her co-invested Tribes.
I then love quiet endings
for this global namaste psalm,
when my monastic ego
re-enters Earth's deeply private sacred school
co-mentoring lessons
Yang proposes what we learned
from last night's dreamy discern,
and Yintegrity inductively disposes why
we saw and heard
contentiously dissonant stragglers
Offering a gentle decompositional reminder,
we must overcome traumatic karma, together,
preferably in four-harmonic
resonant polyphonic
therapy.
I love our not so solitary Earth-morning
CoPresence
breathing in Yang positive,
breathing out Yintegrity's double-negatives,
appositional dipolarities,
reverse co-relational analogies,
positive polycultural love
as not not negative angry fear of monocultural hate,
singing co-passionate dialectical raves
in resonant 4/4 octaves
Primal AnthroMe/GaianWe
deep dawning resilience,
smooth as brown-skinned silk.
Categories:
matins, day, deep, dream, earth,
Form:
Parallelismus Membrorum
You might hear
such bells if you rise
early to
sketch your line
of footprints like music notes
across dewy grass.
Categories:
matins, nature
Form:
Shadorma
Above
cotton wool clouds
evaporate into
a sepia haze,as the sun
awakes
Categories:
matins, seasons,
Form:
Cinquain
This is a true, but amusing tale,
Hope your laughter does not fail,
'Tis a saga of a cockatoo,
Of life, he held a jaundiced view,
At the going down of the sun,
Cocky embellished his own fun,
And at the rising of each dawn,
Cocky's catharsis our ears did adorn,
The parrot kept talking, none listened to he,
Cocky had such a vivid vocabulary,
All starting with "F...ing C...'s"!
We heard his morning matins, you see,
His vespers were hard to believe,
'Twas sociolinguistic acquisition, prithee,
His jaded look at society,
Swearing is cathartic, but so lazy,
Yes, old cocky had such a vocabulary!
Categories:
matins, angst, bird, funny, perspective,
Form:
Free verse
In Paradise, in it's grass, they dig holes.
In which, to place the ashes of those who can pay.
The grass grows between the Cloisters, Cathedral and
the silence of stone monks.
From within the Cloisters, echoing steps on flagstones, ricochet out through gothic arches,
along, with whispers, low hum chatter, and the noise of a refectory serving dinners.
This pleasant blend rises above Paradise, like a singing congregation and choir exalts, filling hearts with glory.
There must be days when the green blades can hear the psalms at matins, through to the hymns of evensong, smell the dinners served, and recognise familiar voices and their steps.
Days when the sun warms the ground, blessing the soil, which is listening to the warm of Paradise.
Well worth paying for.
Categories:
matins, blessing, death, paradise,
Form:
Prose
THE CERTAINTY?
Every Sunday at 10.35, whatever the season,
The elderly couple from down the road walk by on their way to Matins.
It used to be 10.45 in their prime but, as age creeps on, it takes more time to get there.
He still wears a suit with collar and tie, whatever the season.
She still wears a hat, complete with hat pin, whatever the reason. Well, her generation did,
Convinced no doubt of eternal damnation for bareheaded women.
So here they are on their way to their Church -C of E, medium high,
Where the service is just as it’s always been. No guitars or modern beat, no gimmicks from the pulpit.
Just Hymns Ancient and Modern and Psalm eighty-four; and later the Vicar shakes hands at the door as they leave.
They’ve prayed to their loving and merciful God; and I’d like to ask them,
“Is this the same loving and merciful God who let children die in that earthquake last week?
And who sends no rain to an African state so that more children die at a terrible rate in the sun?”
But, of course, I wouldn’t challenge their faith. Just think how I’d feel if they were convinced
And I’d taken away their strength that saw them through life.
But they would simply smile indulgently at one naive enough to question what enlightened folk have known two thousand years.
“It’s all in the Good Book,” they’d say and quote a verse or two that proves to them that everything in that same book is true.
And now, at 12.25, whatever the season, the elderly couple from down the road return to their Sunday lunch.
To the warm smell of the slowly cooking joint and the scolding yap of the poodle who doesn’t see the point
of Matins.
They’ll carry on in the simple certainty of their faith,
And leave me to ponder my uncertainty.
November 2018
Categories:
matins, christian, conflict, confusion,
Form:
Rhyme