Mortal Soul

Oh mortal soul that clothes this raging life
With your vibrant dynamic urgency,
Inviting earth’s beauty beneath and around me
In an effervescent spirit of vivacious ebullience
Keeping me in gracious harmony with my world.

Protect me from the devil’s evil that sets in wait
Raising its ugly head of virtual wickedness
Plowing through the raped eternity of immortality
Casting darkness in the light without hope
Leaving behind the waste of wrecked lives.

Shield me from anger in the winds of dark eternity
Safeguard me against a conglomeration of woes
Dappling the graves of ill begotten aspirations.
Where hopes slide by the wayside to destruction.

Guard me from coveting aged past times of Egyptian tombs,
Decayed and webbed with crusted mold—wasted thoughts
The mummification of mortality suspended—wasted memories
Where hearts turn silent and cease to pound with reality.

Nor shall I salvage the intrepid idols of war-torn faces
Mourning long into the night on dreams destroyed
Tossed by the wayside as markers of dead issues
Like decaying life turned inward while all around
The soul scratches at the imaginary door for redemption.

I reap the harvest of my tears for tomorrow’s
Yellow rose, born, budding, wilting day by day
Where Clover greens the air growing over the past;
Whispering to the rows where mounds of clay
Sit silently like crosses of war of dead memories.

Oh Mortal soul
Let the heavens roll and the earth tumble in its stormy seas
Of impatience where passion wallows in the shallow depths
Struggling within the deep chasm, the abyss of existence
Of coarse and jilted yearnings gone awry like diverging paths.

Rush on into the night air stilled with twinkling fireflies
Dressing the evening skies in shimmering glory for a light-year moment
Passing into extinction on fluttering wings sailing away, beauty lost
Hearts sore, minds dulled, moans for resurrection.

Rest oh mortal soul in they consummation of dwelling in resplendent light
Where doom mounts away into the far reaches of eternity.
And life becomes a miniscule moment to grasp
To shape and mold around us like a safe door between all else
Shutting out terror of the night, and storms that shatter goals and hearts
Reaching, always reaching for that inner light
Of the mortal soul within us.

© 1969 Jeanette Cooper