.

To Music

Oh, Music, wherein lies your wondrous power
To pierce the barren heart and open wide
Joy’s floodgate in the soul, that from inside
Fresh streams may flow that make the desert flower?

By what strange force do your strains overwhelm
The soul beneath great cataracts that surge
From worlds on high, as earth and heaven merge
And mortal eyes behold a timeless realm?

Your lilting sounds are like a flock of birds
That rise exultantly into the sky,
Unbounded by the earth, and free to fly
In crimson realms, too beautiful for words.

What sight is this my spellbound eyes behold
When lifted by sweet music to the skies?
Could this be Eden? Is it paradise,
Whose radiant fields before me now unfold?

Why does the vision make me want to cry
With joy and sadness, pain and ecstasy?
Perhaps it is because I long to be
Forever where my heart’s desires lie.

The weary sons of Adam still lament
The loss of Eden, poignantly in view
When notes, like shaken petals, waft into
Our world on breezes from the world that went.

For now, we weep to hear such honied strains,
But soon sad hearts will joy to enter in
That golden place once forfeited through sin,
Restored in Him whose beauty never wanes.

Flow on, my soul, flow swiftly to the sea
Your windswept, rippling waters rushing on
With eagerness, by music ever drawn
Yet nearer to your glorious destiny!

.

.

Nocturne

When I was just a boy, and very small,
On journeys home at night, I used to crawl
Beneath the car’s rear window, where I’d lie
And stare into the dark, nocturnal sky.

Alone, it seemed, in some secluded place,
Absorbed by the unboundedness of space,
I’d feel myself drawn upward to the stars,
Oblivious to all the passing cars.

Above the motor’s rumble, I would hear
The sound of voices, garbled and unclear,
Whose droning seemed to reach me from afar,
Like some transmission from a distant star.

How wonderfully cozy I would feel
While lying there, with father at the wheel
And mother’s murmur, like a lullaby,
Surrounded by the vast, devouring sky.

How overawed I felt to face that black
Immensity while lying on my back,
Adrift at sea, like some abandoned waif,
Yet part of me on earth and feeling safe.

The soft vibration underneath my head
Made me forget that I was not in bed,
So, drifting off into the soundless deep,
I’d close my child’s eyes and fall asleep.

How many years ago that was!—and still
On cloudless nights, alone out on the hill,
When I look up into the starry heaven,
I find I am once more a child of seven.

Enveloped by that void, I feel so small
As if, with age, I had not grown at all,
As if the passing years had made me shrink
And brought me to nonbeing’s very brink.

For looking up, and seeing I’m a speck—
A sight to hold my grown—up pride in check!—
Without significance in terms of size,
I find my value only in God’s eyes.

For though this cosmos seems to have no end,
God’s power and love its limits far transcend;
So infinite was God’s own will to save,
The Son of His unfathomed love He gave.

When I behold that boundless love so deep,
I find that I can still drop off to sleep,
For though life’s mysteries can make me reel,
I know my Father still is at the wheel.

.

.

The Lone Tree

In silent solitude the old tree stands
Beneath the open sky in yonder field,
Its leafy arms upraised like praying hands
Receptive to all gifts the heavens yield:

The sunshine’s warming beams, the gentle rain
That nourishes the earth and makes it new,
The cooling breeze that blows across the plain,
The dark of night that brings refreshing dew—

Such gifts the tree receives with reverent grace,
Its branches stretching out and reaching high,
Engulfed by the enormity of space,
The sprawling emptiness of land and sky.

All by itself it stands, remote and still,
Cut off by space and haze from other trees
That likewise stand alone on many a hill
And whisper only to the passing breeze.

At break of day, with slow and pensive pace,
Through swishing grass and beds of wildflowers,
I make my way here to this lonely place,
To rest awhile beneath these cooling bowers.

For hours, I sit, oblivious to time,
Removed from every sight that would oppress,
To seek a peace, celestial and sublime,
Drawn from a realm transcending time and space.

And while in quiet stillness I abide,
Reflecting on my Heavenly Father’s love,
The thirsty boughs within me open wide
To drink in heaven’s blessings from above.

Receptive to the flowing gifts of heaven,
I drink them as a thirsty man drinks down
Cold water from a fountain, freely given;
I drink and drink, my earthly cares to drown.

I find myself revived, made like my twin
Who keeps on thriving, growing strong and stout,
Rejuvenated by a power within
Though weathered by the elements without.

I quench my thirst throughout the morning hours
And wish this timeless time would never cease;
For now, at least, I lie beneath these bowers,
Lost in a private ecstasy of peace.

.

.

Martin Rizley grew up in Oklahoma and in Texas, and has served in pastoral ministry both in the United States and in Europe. He is currently serving as the pastor of a small evangelical church in the city of Málaga on the southern coast of Spain, where he lives with his wife and daughter. Martin has enjoyed writing and reading poetry as a hobby since his early youth.

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21 Responses

  1. Paddy Raghunathan

    Martin,

    All three poems are lovely. Your style is so fluid, that the length of the poem is never a detriment to the reader.

    In every one of the poems above, I was “lost in a private ecstasy of peace.”

    Keep writing!

    Best regards,

    Paddy

    Reply
  2. jd

    Agree whole heartedly with Paddy above. All three poems are beautifully penned. I especially love the final line of the second with its tie of the earthly father to our heavenly One.

    Reply
    • Martin Rizley

      Thank you, Rafa, for such kind words. I´m so glad that you enjoy my poems.

      Reply
  4. Roy Eugene Peterson

    I truly love your precious, peaceful, sleep-inducing poems. I have had similar experiences in life as a child sleeping on long trips listening to the soft radio and hum of the engine. Music has always been a major part of my life as a performing baritone artist. You captured the magnificence of music in beautiful words and imagery that is compelling. The “Lone Tree” conveys the sense of timelessness I sensed on the Dakota prairie where I grew up as a child. Beautifully done and praise worthy.

    Reply
  5. Monika Cooper

    “Nocturne” is numinous and soothing, a rhymed and reasoned discourse, mingled with something from above. (I especially like the rhyme of “heaven” with “seven.”)

    Nostalgia is a good thing: the inner motor driving us home. With Our Father at the wheel. Wonderful nostalgia in your poem.

    Reply
    • Monika Cooper

      “Adrift at sea, like some abandoned waif,
      Yet part of me on earth and feeling safe.”

      This reminded me of the Melville quote: “To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold.”

      Reply
    • Martin Rizley

      Monika, I so appreciate your observations. I agree with you about the importance of nostalgia. The older I get, it seems that memories play more of a role in the poems I write.

      Reply
  6. Mary Gardner

    Martin, these three works epitomize what poetry should be.

    Reply
    • Martin Rizley

      Mary, that is quite a compliment! I am so encouraged from your words to keep writing.

      Reply
  7. Cynthia Erlandson

    “To Music” is a superb example of a poet portraying the invisible with visible imagery (streams, cataracts, flocks of birds, flower petals), instead of resorting to piles of adjectives. Indeed, both great music, and its effects upon us, are ineffable — because they are “too beautiful for words”, and because they make “earth and heaven merge” — and yet you have managed to use words to convey their profundity. And I love the way you’ve explored the theme of our exile from Eden and our deep longing for heaven. It reminds me of this quote from C.S. Lewis’ his great poem “Vowels and Sirens”: “Of vanished knowledge / Was their intemperate song, /A music that resembled /Some earlier music / That men are born remembering.” (Here’s a link to a post about it, including the poem:
    https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/vowels-and-sirens-c-s-lewis-poem-of-the-week-andrew-mcculloch/
    Also, from Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain”: “All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness.”
    I’ve tried to approach the same subject in “Anthem: Byrd in Flight” (August, 2022). Thank you for this wonderful poem. (Now I’ll read the other two.)

    Reply
    • Martin Rizley

      Cynthia,
      Thank you for your thoughtful reflections on my poem “To Music.” I just read your poem “Byrd in Flight” and noted the similarities between the two poems which you pointed out. I love the way you have taken Byrd´s name as a cue for the avian imagery you employ to describe the interplay between earth and heaven that occurs through the singing of Byrd´s heavenly music. Having sung several of Byrd´s anthems in high school and college choir, I can attest to the otherworldly beauty of the polyphonic tapestries of sound that he weaves with notes like birds in flight.

      Reply
      • Cynthia Erlandson

        Thank you very much, Martin. I rather envy real singers, like yourself, who can actually take those notes off the page and make them vocally fly!

  8. C.B. Anderson

    You’ve gone ecstatic, Martin, which is not at all a bad thing. Both poems exhibit a headlong flight into the wild blue yonder, and there is nothing there with which we should hesitate to engage. You are on track, and I think that you know that you are.

    Reply
  9. Martin Rizley

    My wife tells me that she, too, could identify with the second poem, because she would also climb beneath the rear window of the car on trips home at night when she was a child– that was before the advent of mandatory seat belt laws! It was probably not a very safe way to ride in the car, but it was a lot of fun.
    Dakota is on my wish list of places I would like to visit. I just saw the other day pictures of Bad Lands national park in South Dakota– awesome landscape. Thank you, Roy, for your appreciative comments.

    Reply
    • Martin Rizley

      Lazarus, Thank you for your very complementary remark! I appreciate it very much.

      Reply
  11. Margaret Coats

    You are blessed, Martin, with those contemplative hours to spend under the lone tree–which is a fine metaphor for an individual person, in the ways you show. The nocturne draws to a close very nicely with the return to the childhood scene, and “father at the wheel.” I almost recognize how you could view the stars, because my family had a station wagon with a full seat facing the rear window. I sometimes had it all to myself when my siblings did not care to ride moving backwards. It is always a challenge to find a concept that works well when writing about music, and you did quite well to compare it here to the lost Eden. Eden is earthly, as are musical sounds, and you can thus stay with earthly imagination, rather than moving to the “music of the spheres” or heavenly music, of which we have no experience. I recall a poem in which you praised the beauty of creation and (if I recall correctly) stated that you did not need angel choirs while created things sang well of God. I understand your choices in both poems better now. And I have certainly enjoyed all three of these!

    Reply
    • Martin Rizley

      Margaret,
      I really appreciate your thoughtful reflections on my poems. I don´t always have the luxury to enjoy “contemplative hours” sitting beneath a tree, but from time to time, when I have the liberty to do so, I love to seek a place of quiet solitude in the countryside, where I can sit and pray and reflect on my life and contemplate the beauty of God´s handiwork around me; and I always come away from those little retreats feeling refreshed and renewed.

      Reply

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