As soft as snowdrops snowflakes settle;
more soft than petals, gently fall…
Less shy than snowdrops snow drops all
its inhibitions… Cold as metal
not to the touch alone, but sight
as well, and every other sense
but one: that sense of wonder, flight
can wake in some, made more intense
by stars that turn to flowers, then, gently,
dissemble all that circles round
less tremblingly, till, indistinctly,
another Eden touches down.
John H.B. Martin is a poet who lives in London, England. He is a graduate of London University and Australia National University and has been writing for many decades. He has written four novels and is working on a fifth. His magnum opus is a six-volume epic poem. Most of his work is yet to be published.
Featured in New Lyre - Winter 2024
Winter 2024
Discover more of John H.B. Martin’s work
John Martin's poem, Landing, is a work which returns the lyre to the Lyric. After several readings my reaction to this lovely artifact of meter, rhyme, and soft-spoken rhetoric remains the same: that ear and voice within my breast can only repeat, "I would have liked to have written that poem." Of course I did not write it. But I can thank and praise Mr. Martin for presenting us with a poem that delights the ear and heart, and does not fail to captivate with the subtlety of its word magic.
Nature does know how to lure the unsuspecting with its striking scenes. Call it the Great Dissembler.