THE CHILD - HOPE & PROMISE

Song of the Lark
~A Circle of Sonnets~

I.
I have heard the last pearl throated thrill
From the sweet dawn promise lark
I know this in the depth of chill
Of the long and sleepless dark

The water is closing over my head
Clammy and dank and pale
The only song on this slender thread
Is the song of the nightingale

But I will not say the drowning dark
Will forever persevere
Nor assume the muteness of the lark
Because I can no longer hear

Above those clouds where surrender lies
The constant sun begins to rise


II.
She will stand at the henge of Salisbury Plain
Looking straight past trashy transient stands
They mean nothing at all to that which remains
In this deep, and enduring land

She drinks it’s power down her bones
Until it crackles through her hair
She thinks of it all as gracious loans
Which she in turn will share

She’ll come home on fire with words
Concepts blooming from her fingers
And then will come the sound of birds
A soul soaring song that lingers

And even if my eyes are dark
I will still paint the sky with the wings of a lark


III.
He wonders what made the earth start
And what is the nature of time
He buys impressionist bizarre art
And he uses interior rhyme

He rewrites Homer after school
Tells me Plato was probably cracked
But Stephen Hawking is pretty cool
Though Nietzsche is kinda abstract

He listens to Beethoven and to Queen
Draws maps of imaginary spheres
I have nested this charming bird fifteen
Inexplicable paradox years

But, somehow, he’ll paint the skies alone
In a wonder of brilliant, bright baritone


IV.
And they are not different or alone
Despite what the media choose
That you are or are not to be shown
On the six and eleven o’clock news

It’s a complex, committed generation
Who have quietly already begun
They were raised on the word “conservation”
They will not fail in what must be done

As for my own inpendening silence
It matters not a shred
For on the stage an Angel stands
And her singing will wake the dead

I do not believe in endings, I do not believe in despair
They opened the cold black coffin, and not a soul was there


©Edwina Peterson Cross