‘Marv’lous Melody’ and Other Poetry by Sara Spry

Marv’lous Melody

I read the words all leaping from the page
And hear the joyful rhythm in my head
But stop for you, an even-tonéd sage
And listen to the words as they are said

I could grow old to listen to your voice
Each nuance is so pleasurable to hear
And so I must profess indifferent choice
To pleasure one, my eye or else my ear

The difference when I read and hear it spoke
Is so minutely small, and yet profound
For when I read, I can the meaning take
But marvel when I stop to hear the sound

For reading poems, or to hear them read
Is marv’lous melody inside my head

A Beginning and Ending

I.
The ruins stretched before me loath to life
I sought to enter there with purpose naught
Except to rediscover things forgot
A place within nostalgia crossed with strife

What dangers and delights did ‘wait me there?
Was there an answer yet for me to find?
Did pure confusion wait within my mind?
Or was this wreck my castle in the air?

I hesitated at the sembled frame
The rusted nails broke long ago by Lyme
The boards with chipping edges warped by time
That shaped a door once bolted by my shame

Yet fearing for the things beneath my skin
I trembled, and then once and all stepped in

II.
The ruins sit behind me in the dust
I leaped the broken threshold with a sigh
Now free of all the things that marred my eye
I left them, with the reason that I must

I’d wandered through my dreams of flowing lace
All drifting in a room without a wall
Then ambled through a damaged memory hall
To gaze at sadness on my idol’s face

And coming through I happened on a den
That holds a monster lurking yet beneath
An old nightmare with nasty, gnashing teeth…
I asked my feet to show me where I’d been

And though I’d but a single step acquired
In but that single step I was inspired

Sara Spry has been published in Avocet, Storyteller and The Penwood Review.