Midnigh Morvening

[A flight of fanciful imagination … by the power of a single word]

A couple of years ago, I wrote a very silly poem! It came to me one day as a result of a word that I used whilst having a conversation, as usual, with a close bunch of Twitter friends (or should that be a Twittersation!). The word, “morvening”, came out of my head, and I decided it would enable me to greet Jacquie Dick and Joe Hesch in the morning of New York and Albany at the same time and with the same word as greeting Marsha Berry in Melbourne’s evening, thus paying deference to their geography. Following a tweet from Jacquie with the suggestion that it sounded “sweetly medieval”, my imagination took flight and a poem was born! Thanks to Jacquie and the rest of the GRPG (Grass Roots Poetry Group) for playing along with my eccentricity, as they all did for some time by using the word themselves, as our common daily greeting.

It is always worthwhile taking an opportunity to say thank you to those particular friends, with whom I have been ‘close’ since 2011. I owe a lot to the GRPG, not least because of these sometimes silly, but always funny exchanges we shared initially on Twitter, in less than 140 characters (and later elsewhere), as we headed toward the publication of our anthology*. As diverse a group as you could imagine, I owe them a lot, because I somehow learned much from all of them; in fact I think they all learned from each other, in their own prticular ways. The experience added value to my prosodic life, that’s for sure.

Anyway, here’s my neologistic contribution to the literary world …

The light it was a brightening
on winter’s dawning day
it was the midnigh morvening
that showed us all the way

and how the beasties of the norn
did plague the Gothan bride,
but facing fiery teeth with Day
the Night stood by her side.

He stood e’er long with triptych scroll
and spake out loud and clear
“behold the midnigh morvening
and be ye of good cheer”

For all the trolls and beasts of nigh
will e’er be gone be’soon
the magic of the morvening
‘ll be written in the rune

And so ’twas wrote on old tryptych,
on every sleepless bed,
that on the midnigh morvening
the Night and Day are wed.

© 2012 John Anstie

[Poem first published on 19 February, 2012]

 

JOHN ANSTIE (My Poetry Library and 42) ~ is a British writer and poet, a contributing editor here at Bardo, and multi-talented gentleman self-described as a “Family man, Grandfather, Occasional Musician, Singer, Amateur photographer and Film-maker, Apple-MAC user, Implementation Manager, and Engineer”. He has participated in d’Verse Poet’s Pub and is a player in New World Creative Union as well as a being a ‘spoken-voice’ participant in Roger Allen Baut’s excellent ‘Blue Sky Highway‘ radio broadcasts. John has been blogging since the beginning of 2011. He is also a member of The Poetry Society (UK).

*****

John has also been involved in the recent publication of two anthologies that are the result of online collaborations among two international groups of amateur and professional poets. One of these is The Grass Roots Poetry Group, for which he produced and edited their anthology, “Petrichor* Rising“. The other group is d’Verse Poet Pub, in which John’s poetry also appears The d’Verse Anthology: Voices of Contemporary World Poetry, produced and edited by Frank Watson.

* Petrichor – from the Greek pɛtrɨkər, the scent of rain on the dry earth.