Monday, December 31, 2012

The Sunday Whirl...on Monday





The shards of fall are strewn about
Lining bronze banks along the creek
And winter gales brood from the south
Against stripped landscapes pallid cheek

The flame of autumn’s afterglow
Beneath Time’s tender, tangent kiss
Is mute; as stars in ice and snow
Bedazzle stricken emptiness

Moment to moment is betrothed
It will deliver in due time
A life; New Year is softly clothed
In ambiance of hope sublime

The aftermath of seasons bleed
Out to the point of no return
But tears of joy and sorrow knead
Life-lessons we are bound to learn

So pop the top and pour some cheer
Refurbish dim and dormant dream
For soon, too soon another year
Will drift to naught in Time’s swift stream

© Janet Martin



89



The Wonders of Love




There is no pride in love
No selfish vanity
To find its pure fulfillment
We must seek humility

There is no fear in love
And as it freely pours
It never empties but instead
Increases more and more

There is no guilt in love
But its vile tempter, lust
Will sully faultless purity
And rob the heart of trust

There is no greed in love
Nor self-sought indulgence
Yet Love succors our deepest need
In wondrous recompense

There is no loss in love
Its call, our greatest debt
The more we give to fellowman
The more and more we get

© Janet Martin

Humility needs no disguises
Pride screams to claim our view
What we think of ourselves is seen
By what we say and do

***

Love and lust
Are like oil and vinegar
They do not mix

***

Lust spawns gaping hunger
It is greedy and weak-willed
While love satisfies our longing
In its giving, we are fulfilled

***

Lust is a sign of weakness
Love is proof of strength

***



Tumblr_lehsh3wabk1qdp53oo1_500_large

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Squandering Second Thoughts



 Photo

As softly I wander back over the year
I squander sweet second thoughts on you, dearest dear
Time’s subtle purloining seals each moment-gasp
Yet it cannot steal the fond memories I clasp

Here where the cold wind moans blue in the dark
I held your hand as we strolled through the park
I hold you still though the summer has fled
And all that remains is its song in my head

Down by the woodlot stark skeletal limbs
Reach for the echo of verdant midnight hymns
But all they can muster of their fallen grace
Are winter’s stiff bluster and a tear on my face

The gathering shadow cannot snuff your sigh
Though eve snuffs the daylight and dawn snuffs the night
And though Time’s purloining seals years in its clutch
It cannot steal the thought of you from my touch

© Janet Martin

This Year...



 

 Poetic Bloomings is eager to hear of our New Years Resolutions

(short version)

Help me Lord
To seek from above
Life’s lone measure of worth
Lord, teach me to love

(longer version)

This year I want to learn to love
Love fully, the moment unfolding from
Providence above
And to love you
Not coldly, from the outside in
But simply, in spite of myriad flaws
Because we are fellow-men

I want to slow down
And listen to the words
You do not dare to tell
But speak in hungry silences
I want to learn to listen well
Oh, I want to learn to love
Before you or I slip from this swell

This year I want to learn to love
…Love bears all things
In spite of us
It does not envy, boast
Or seek selfishly
Lord, teach me to love
Others, as you have loved me

Lord, teach me this four-letter word
With heart wide open
With vision un-blurred by
By greedy groping
What good is anything, its measure to prove
If I have never
Learned to love?

© Janet Martin

Why Me, Lord?

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Ode to the Year





Farewell; though you were barren but a year ago
You have borne your ordinance of victory and woe
Into the urn of no return I place your memory
There is no future in the past of nevermore will be

Farewell; the passion I perceived when first I touched your gown
Has fallen where the autumn trees have laid their burnished crown
You teased into fruition my clenched dreams of yesterday
While, softly with your other hand you stole its gleam away

Farewell; your fringe is fading, cold, gold pool against the west
Your virgin garment splattered with my crass, clumsy caress
Though fain I still would kiss your feet, you slip into the blue
The pain of love is bittersweet; where is the proof of you?

Farewell; upon the wind you ride, obscure and potent force
While we await with baited hope your forerunners discourse
Within past’s permanence you seal your four-season embrace
And never turn to kiss the farewell teardrops from my face

Farewell; oh tender gift of grace from life's Giver above
Into bygones vast ethereal place is but yesterday's love
And from compassion's bowers hallowed mercy floods the sphere
As He imparts from hope's ramparts, to us, another year


© Janet Martin


Friday, December 28, 2012

Monumental...Moment






(It was so still this morning I could almost hear it...)

Open your eyes
Do you see it?
Slipping from frost-gilded bough
Monumental breath-fortune
Here in the little ‘now’

Open your hand
Do you feel it?
No? Yet it’s there somehow
Sealing within it life’s offering
Held in the little’ now’

Open your ears
Do you hear it?
Dripping from hope-haloed prow?
Notes in a love-song of moments
Shaped in the little now

Open your mouth
Do you taste it?
Bittersweet afterglow
Reaching, receiving, releasing
All in the little ‘now’

© Janet Martin

I know…I’ve spoken of ‘the little now’ before, but

It is the only thing of worth we hold
Yet we often over-look it somehow
Because it seems so very small
We simply call it ‘now’.


Home Sweet Home





Beyond those doors and windows
Within those humble walls
Are childhood’s precious shadows
And memory-tender halls

Life’s brick and mortar dwelling
If shared in unity
Is Love’s soft-glimpsed fore-telling
Of what Heaven will be

Lord, in this little journey
Wherever we may roam
May our hearts forever be
Love’s gracious home sweet home

Janet Martin~ 

We all travel this time of year, don't we?
even if simply in thought,
back to what once was...

Above is a picture of my childhood home

Hand in Hand



 


Hand in hand with Him I go
Though fear and grief and ill wind blow
His promises will lead me home
Hand in hand, Dear Lord, I come

Hand in hand, He leads me on
Through earth’s dark night to Heaven’s dawn
His rod and staff conquers this dust
So hand in hand, in Him I trust

Hand in hand, Lord, hold me near
Lest I become burdened with fear
Remind me of to Whom I cling
Hand in hand with Christ the King

© Janet Martin

Mit Jesus (a Pennsylvania Dutch Poem of Hope)




Mit Jesus bin ich imma frei
Ich brauch ke sarriah maucha
Vile Eahea is imma neagsht debai
Fa mie node tsu bedrauchta

Mit Jesus is ma goot fasargged
Eahea liebed uns vie ke anna
Un laft mit uns bis unsa Arb
In vaeg net liecht fashtanna

Mit Jesus, hut ma huffening
De veld is net unsa himmel
Des is da shtrove un ielauding
Tsu Sie fa imma un imma

© Janet Martin

Translation...  With Jesus

With Jesus we are always free
We do not need to fear or worry
Because He is always near
Our need to behold

With Jesus we are well taken care of
He loves us like no other
And walks with us to our Inheritance
In ways not easily understood

With Jesus we have hope
This world is not our heaven
This is our strife and invitation
To His forever and ever

Here We Are...



 

Here we are, keen with fresh hope
As old and new converge
The old, sealed in yesteryear’s grope
The new, a gleaming surge

Here we are; in spite of life
We resolve once again
To fight anew this little strife
Of gladness, sadness, pain

Here we are; the portal where
We stood one year ago
Now blemished with our scattered care
A scarred and marred plateau

Here we are; with nothing much
But to resolve once more
To laugh, love, learn beneath life’s touch
To God’s forevermore

© Janet Martin

As I read this (please consider reading it if you want a worthwhile smile yet much to seriously ponder and remember) I found myself thinking...yes, here we are once again. I don't really 'do' New Year's Resolutions and yet it seems this is always a portal where we ponder life thus far and resolve to do better and not give up.

Happy New Year, all!


Of Corridors to Eternity





Time is so much more
Than a jesting of moments
Grazing earth’s shore

Time, for all it can ever be
Is but the corridor
To eternity

Time is a gift whereby we procure
The hour we make our calling

Time, a transient vapor door
Leading us into
Forevermore

© Janet Martin

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Almost...a Sonnet





Almost I feel you like it used to be
Perched on the brink of both future and past
Watching the twilight sweep over the lea
Shadows beginning to lower their masts
Almost I hear the murmur of the waves
Rushing, receding, holding, letting go
Pushing life’s moments to aerial graves
Without depleting their subaqueous flow
Almost I taste your whisper on my lips
Trembling as when I welcomed your first touch
Almost I reach with wanton fingertips
Into the sky for things hands cannot clutch
Almost I feel what once surely had been
Save for the miles and the years in between

Striving for self is grossest vanity
Time is insistent, thus I must turn loose
The wants God never intended for me
Lest they become an invisible noose
Here on the edge of morrow’s yesterday
I dare not covet what no longer is
The heart is both hunter and tenuous prey
I do not plead for one last farewell kiss
Yet, no one will suffer for me, your good-bye
Or weep wrenching tears of beautiful love
And now as twilight devours the sky
You slip from me like a hand from a glove
Forgive me, dear Lord, I am surely a fool
Beggar and king must adhere to Time’s rule

Darling, almost I feel the warmth of your sigh
Soft on my skin where time renders its mark
Somewhere the sea, like a lover’s lullaby
Croons its endearments to us through the dark
Parting is beautiful sorrow, they say
I’d choose a humbler delight in your arms
Almost I cannot relinquish this day
Though I have danced, reveling in its charms
It simply expands the missing of you
As history claims its vulnerable gasp
Almost, I cannot bear this shade of blue
Prying your silver swan-song from my grasp
Almost I hear you cajoling its sheen
Save for the ocean of moments between

J~

Poetic Bloomings invites us to share our favorite in-form form to close out the year.
Mine is the Sonnet.


The Ways of a Poem...(to poets the wide world over)





Your British eyes smile, blue
Across the sea
Poems scale mile-barriers
Effortlessly

I hear your whisper
From the turquoise south
Your poem melts like summer
In December's mouth

Even in the dark
Thought cannot lose its way
Poems drifts like a spark
To ports far, far away

Ah, Spanish matador
Red capes cannot shield
The thrust of a poem
In its passion revealed

Muse, like tumbleweed
North, south, east or west
Roams ‘cross the prairie-land
Climbs Mount Everest

She traverses oceans
Dallies from the moon
While dangling a poem
From the tip of her swoon

There is no rampart
A poem cannot climb
Such is the wonder
Of rhythm and rhyme

British eyes smile, blue
Like coming home
Thought shapes her beauty
Into a poem

© Janet Martin



Snow-fall Sonnets





The winter-dawn scene is white-sheen serene
No hint of tempests that tortured night’s girth
Lambasting hollow and tall evergreen
Sweeping stray petals of fall from the earth
Now children wake with a shriek of delight
At last old man winter has ceased to snore
Flinging his blankets of snow-powder white
Into the sky with a sulk-bulky roar
As gray-umber scruff of pasture and bluff
Boast gleaming robes of gilded royalty
Glistening diamonds bedazzle the cuff
Where pauper’s ragged tatters used to be
Elements shudder then softly release
To hill and gutter sweet heavenly peace

***

What is so rare is a fine winter day?
Though June doth possess verdant emerald gown
December polishes November gray
Decking youth’s folly with wisdom’s white crown
Over the stubble and trouble-wrought past
Grace is bestowed, not in pewter-pitch ash
But tumbling and twirling, old man winter’s blast
Blankets dull yards in silver-studded sash
Rousing within us the slumbering child
Urging us to suavely brave the sharp chill
Dashing through unblemished field, free and wild
Pausing to touch the air, stringent and still
For sure as sure as the summer doth pass
Soon this day too is a drop in time’s glass

***

Firesides beckon; orange-leaping romance
Snickers and smolders; its mystic tenure
Bestowing to poets and dreamers a dance
Of flickering flame in amber allure
Outside the artist, most often despised
Paints masterpieces into the dark hush
Though oft he is cursed, berated, chastised
Still he extols Heaven’s Hand ‘neath His brush
This is the season of sleds, skates and books
Tender hiatus from dirt-dreary toil
This is the reason for cozy house-nooks
Mini vacations from work-weary spoil
Gather your loved ones and let the winds blow
This is the season; let it snow, let it snow

© Janet Martin

p-s-s-t. I'll be honest,
this is for those who did get dumped on yesterday. Once again, we are on the fringe...



Like Smoke Rings...



 

Where once the hour chimed her in
From portals mystic-gray
Now soon it tolls her out again
To sleep earth’s time away

How fleet the feet of moments dance
We fall beneath their spell
Mesmerized by the romance
Of impending farewell

How swift the splurge of seasons merge
With predecessors spent
How soon the swoon of verdant June
Is stricken, stripped and bent

How quick the truth shunned in our youth
Leaves its halo of gray
The clock chimes clear, another year
Like smoke-rings, drifts away

© Janet Martin

Wild Wind Song



 

When the night falls down
In a dark velvet gown
Crowning earth’s borders
East, west, north and south
I hear the croon
Of a lost afternoon
I taste the salt
Of its tear in my mouth

When the wind moans blue
On midnight’s avenue
Phantom scavenger
Fearless and bold
I hear the lay
Of a sweet summer day
Warm in my memory
Yet to my touch, cold

When the wee house shutters
‘neath dark threats it utters
And love-stitched blankets
Cannot snuff its bluff
I hear the wail
Of a life growing pale
Heavy with things
Which are never enough

When dark night is deep
And the earth is asleep
Save for stark tree-tops
Tormented and tossed
I hear a moan
Echo sad and alone
A wayfarer searching
For years she has lost

© Janet~

Tonight the house shivers and shakes
as the harsh winter wind
howls and rakes 
its talons of steel across the dark
chill and wroth
shrouding the earth in a silver-white cloth...


Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Overtures of Spring





Moments burst, then twirl and swirl
Unfurling hours through the air
Rapid exhale, wild enigma
Painting portraits, raw and rare

Though grim gale hurls snow-storm spasms
Its insistence cannot quench
Dormant daydreams in the garden
And the bud that tree limbs clench

Soon will stir a ruby rustle
And what seemed a hopeless thing
Spills into nature’s spacious parlor
In grand overtures of Spring

© Janet Martin

Tendersweet Tangle



 Photo

What is it about you, my beautiful sweet?
Dashing through childhood on fantasy’s feet
Scattering pieces of my heart in the path
Of good-night, good-morning kiss aftermath

 Why are you in such an eager-free rush
Racing to the border of pink-gold dawn blush?
Alas, but the beckoning of life’s darling dreams
Is stronger than my murmured pathos, it seems

Where is it that you must so hurriedly race?
Pushing ever forward to that mystical place
Of sweeter tomorrows drenched with honeyed charm
While I stoop to trace your footprint still warm

What is it about you, my beautiful sweet?
I cannot dissuade the dreamer in your feet
Nor would I, for love holds even as it lets go
For my heart-strings are tangled in its afterglow

© Janet Martin

My oldest daughter had to work yesterday. 
She was gone before anyone was up 
and I missed her as we opened our gifts 
because I realized what once was is past, and what is, is slipping through my fingers 
even as I reach to touch the treasure 
of a moment...  



Beautiful Rush



 Photo

You think nothing of it
…slipping between the cold air
And my lips
Your half-grin ignoring
My finger-tips
Reaching to touch
Your touch, softly
Such is the rush
Of a
Memory

J~

Beautiful Legacy...



 Photo



If ever the day should come, my love
When I can no longer spell
In tender, whispered endearments
Words you love to hear me tell
If ever the pen should fall, my love
Forever to the crypt
Of memories and what once was
Before the hour slipped
Its chill fingers beneath the clasp
Of warm and vibrant touch
To snuff the laughter and the dance
From days we love so much
…and if ever the time should come, my love
That we reach the stepping-stone
From this trial-and-error-slip-and-stumble
To the great Beyond
I should covet but this;
That life and love’s sweet memory
Will comfort you and that its kiss
Will be a beautiful legacy

...and if the silence should echo with years
I pray its music will be grand
…not filled with sad, regretful tears
And cruel, harsh reprimand
Oh, when the things that are, my love
Will then no longer be
I pray that we have left behind
A beautiful legacy

© Janet Martin

My daughter works at a Long-term Care Facility. She cares for an 89 yr. old lady who has a form of dementia and almost every day she hears the same words…

I love you honey…
Do you know what love is?
Do you have a boyfriend or a husband?
Will you tell him what I used to tell mine?

'I love you for one-hundred thousand reasons

but most of all I love you because you’re mine

and because you are you…'

When Emily told me this I had to think…
If ever we grow to the point where we say the same things over and over, is this not a Beautiful Legacy?

Thank-you for This...

very-inspirational-blogger

Tim at
Vanyieck's Last Stand  nominated me for this award! Thank-you so much. I would be honored to pass it along to a few deserving bloggers.

As per the rules of accepting this award,

I must share seven facts about myself:

1. I enjoy life's simple gifts of nature above any 'thing'
2.I enjoy photographing these daily miracles
3. I am a homebody to a fault.
4. I love health and fitness
5. Of earthly blessings being a mother and wife is a gift I  thank God for daily.
6.Of earthly blessing, being a mother and wife is a gift that teaches and humbles me daily
7.I am a daughter, a sibling of nine , and saved by grace

Rule #2, pass along the award...

I would love to nominate;

Sue at Reflections of God's Glory
 Her posts are filled with wisdom and God's grace.

Kateri at Dandelion Haven
Kateri has an eye that frames His handiwork in gorgeous photos!
Every post is beautiful and inspiring.

Ella at Ella's Edge
Ella shares a myried of wonderful talent and love on her blog.
She is a special lady!

Jennifer at Poet Laundry
Jennifer's loving spirit shines in her beautiful poetic talent.

Please be sure to visit these blogs and let them know you stopped by.







 

 


If I Should Love...

Photo




When we love
Perfectly
It will be
Heaven

I should wish to love
This way
Even now
To love fully
Then let go
To rejoice completely
In another’s success
And wish them nothing
But happiness
I would love to love
The way I should
And never blush
Should thought rush
From under this hood
Of flesh and blood disguise
And my eyes
Would be the window
To unspoken word
I should love to think
It would be all right
If every thought was heard
And no grudge or spite
Would blemish the light
That ought to shine
From the divine
And it could
If I would
Love like I should…

© Janet Martin





Pondering Her



 

My dear, her lissome hem is sweeping
The far-faint, blue wooded rill
I hear her brewing farewell weeping
When the night is deep and still
For she no more than we, my darling
Can suppress her moment-tear
A trickling flow through sundry ages
And we simply call her Year

How grateful, gladly we embrace her
Arms flung wide, we draw her in
Though in brusque autumn’s knell we chase her
Now she comes; Virile, virgin
Across a sleek and seamless threshold
She alights, whilst hope and fear
Mingles wildly; yet we greet her
As we meet her; the New Year

We cannot unclenched her fingers
To reveal her mystery
She does not run; nor does she linger
On the road to history
But she cradles in her bearing
All those things which we hold dear
Joy and sorrow, potent, searing
Yet we simply call her Year

We pause in limbo; past and future
Presses passion to our lips
Yet, all we cherish, fondle, nurture
Soon to her dominion slips
As we ponder our position
…Who imbues her formless sphere
We bow in humble recognition
Gift of grace is she; New Year

My dear, the hour like a flower
Soon relinquishes her bloom
And no one contains the power
To re-live one afternoon
So we treasure the kind measure
Of her tender moment-tear
As she slips through our whispers
…yet we simply call her Year

© Janet Martin

I cannot BELIEVE how swiftly she comes, but to leave
I have learned it is possible to celebrate and grieve
Simultaneously

I touch with my thought those I cannot hold
For she steals as she gives, moments seal as they roll
Continuously

And sometimes as I ponder her perpetual splendor
And sometimes as I miss those sealed in her kiss
And sometimes as tear-tender, I remember

All I can do,
Is whisper
Thank-you
For He blesses graciously and mercifully
To we, undeservedly

J~