Byron the Earthworm

An earthworm's home you wouldn't like

It's cold and damp and full of night

Still, It's where I am and can only be,

When I scribble and wiggle hope you see,

How hard to write immortal poetry,

While watching out for greedy birdies,

When rains wash me along the gutters,

Helplessly drowning, my heart flutters,

Suddenly  over the  gutter crawl,

And burrow into earth under garden wall,

In darkness may live, but full of light,

Fearing rain, but still scribble in delight,

In humility offer these  poetic scribbles,

Penned with few words and lots of wiggles.

Copyright 2010- 2017, Thomas J Martin, all rights reserved.

Hummingbird Summer 

Lost my heart in that summer morning,
Grace of palms and and scent of pine,
Morning glories light the morning.

Hummingbirds bloom in every blossom’s breath 
Flickering of gold dust shook from tiny heads;
Fairy magicians 
Glistening the morning light, 
A sleight of hazy wings,

That summer so much too beautiful to bear; 
Flying, dancing, humming, being, 
Quickening in the cathedral light; 
And soaring on some liquor divine, 
Divinely mad! A fool with wings!
The anointed messenger of the gods of play;

For now is the time:

Stopped and still in the golden air 
I see myself shining everywhere.


( First published in Sketchbook)
Copyright 2010 to 2017, all rights reserved.

Prayer to the Thunder God

For my Grandfather 


Thunder in the morning I complain
 Summer's even 

Hoeing in the rain
 I soon quit the field
 Under a barn roof I gulp ice water From a Mason Jar
 And minding the lightning's power 
(Grandma always said to stay away from Dogs and cats
(They draw the lightning down, she said)

I edge away a little from Fuzzy and Blackie, 
Curled up on some dusty sacks...
I'd just as soon not hoe tobacco
Or pluck those great horned green worms either,

 But I am an ancient relative of the land 
Soaked in the blood of my forebears, 
My Grandfather Martin Runs through me 
Into the deer and hawk,
 Into the lands he loved so fiercely,
 He never knew his own Sullen, lonely children; 
Still, the land's own Freedom, 

The spring at the one tree From which we drank 
Sweat pouring off us
 Where the Light Falls 
In the grasshopper blur of Midsummer

 The lightning dances in my eyes
 The thunder rattles in my ears,

O Great Spirit, 
I stand in your heart 
Speaking with thunder, 
Strong with lightning, How do I live apart?

 O Great Spirit, I stand in your heart 
To be, to be,
 Thunderous, Freefalling and free,

 O My Grandfather,
 O Great Spirit.

--Sketchbook

Nessie

Alltsaigh, Loch Ness - the Scotch Highlands

I made a pact with you near water's edge:
 Before the campers came, I would remove
 The drawings on the hostel's kitchen walls
 In which you are a few sad and patient tires
Half in some blued-out lake with dragon face
So patently fading to public white

. You said you would never come back up
 To startle us again or find disgrace…
 So you said going black under blue;

 I knew you would be back
 Sailing these spindrift waters
 Diving the bone-deep depths and taunting us
 Across the waves with your rippling spines,
 And flair for bumbling melodrama.
 Therefore, I have kept my watch
 And evenings, a blue sword in darkness,
 I look downward and slip off into the night

Copyright Thomas Martin,2006-2015

Published Sketch book--Spring 2010

watching the stars
until the stars
are just stars

(Published March, 2012 - A Hundred Gourds)

Illumination ( Waltz Wave)

a
poem
of
light
hallowed
heightens
the
morning
sun
making
love's delight
a bumblebee
in purple
clover
a
cloud drift
of spring geese
or long
notes
of marsh
wrens

(Published Sketchbook - July/August 2011)

scent of

night-blooming jasmine

words get 

in the way

(Published Frogpond - Fall - 2011)