Showing posts with label March. Show all posts
Showing posts with label March. Show all posts

Friday, March 31, 2023

March Lion Adios


Jim didn't realize he provided the inspiration for the last line in today's poem
when he told me that he carried out a wee, newborn lamb 
from his truck this morning, as he unloaded sheep
 at a New Jersey meat-processing plant...

'Aw! what happens to a baby lamb in a place like that?!' I asked.
 Jim said the person he met said 'we may be a rough environment 
but we take care of these little guys. 
If we are able, we find the mother and put them in a pen
 until they are taken to a new home!'

March is no lamb today, but rather, a lion!
Let's give him a hearty slap on the rump and send him on his welcome way! 
(after a week where he seemed intent on one last hefty hurrah!)

He has switched today's tune/roar from freezing rain to snow...



The other day there was no denying it; the aftermath of a blizzardy bluster
was still very beautiful...



March Lion rakes the tress of trees. Ah, let him roar
And lunge and claw and fret the firmament that waits to pour
In warmer, gentler breeze o-er violet-dappled hills
Ah, let him rage and growl and sneeze, and waken daffodils
And chimes in lily bells, and climes, blush, gold and green
And perches/porches, where we pause a bit with picnic lunch between

…as nature’s orchestra of bird and brook and bee
And wind wafting through woodlands swathed in mint-frothed filigree
Entertains and delights, as budded bowers brim
As stark silhouettes blur as barren limbs burst into hymn
And 'earth’s fulness thereof' swells with hope’s renewed lays
Where winter is forgotten in worlds besotted with praise

Ah, let him seethe and rage and pelt the windowpane
With frozen tears; ah, let him fiercely shake his mangled mane
And thrash the air with brash retaliation, for
March Lion feels the friendly fervor of spring at his door
Where soon sidewalks will wear new mother’s pushing prams
And verdant meadow fair will host the dash and dance of lambs

© Janet Martin

Ps.24:1
The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; 
the world, and they that dwell therein.













Monday, March 21, 2022

Today Spring has Come True...

*Where nature's hidden hold 
Begins to drip and spill
As sweetest wealth of Maple Gold
Gives young and old a thrill... 

 Find your tasty Maple 'treasures' and treats here!






I didn't have the opportunity to post a first day of spring poem yesterday
so let's celebrate its arrival today!

And though we know somewhere
The last snowfall still taunts
With bolder happiness we dare
To dream of flowered haunts...


We revel in the afternoon
Of leafless gold, sun-kissed...


Today spring has come true
The sun climbs a blue hill
Strewing a golden residue
To earth, still stark and chill

And though we know somewhere
The last snowfall still taunts
With bolder happiness we dare
To dream of flowered haunts

The robin sings for rain
Bird-warbling hails the morn
Across the melt-and-mud terrain
The killdeer’s cry is borne

…and though the bud’s cocoon
Is a clenched, maroon fist
We revel in the afternoon
Of leafless gold, sun-kissed

*Where nature's hidden hold 
Begins to drip and spill
As sweetest wealth of Maple Gold
Gives young and old a thrill  
 
A promised land of green
Starts to break winter's spell
Where once a whitewashed world had been
And frigid shadows fell

We sense time’s discipline
That no hand can undo
And smile the smile of youth again
For Today Spring came true

© Janet Martin






Friday, March 4, 2022

March Melody/Medley


This poem began percolating on the first day of March
while I watched the birdies celebrate with unbridled abandon
before the next day turned the bird bath back to a skating rink



They do look a bit shivery though, don't you think?


March kindles in its coming dreamlands of sun-drenched delight
It sparks a sense of celebration to worlds tucked in white
We start to hear an orchestra as tempos ebb and flow
While poetry of petals trembles beneath drifts of snow

March stirs in winter-frazzled hearts spring-hunger’s hope renewed
And reignites the flame that harvest-weariness subdued
As once again thoughts turn toward the flow’r and fruit of seeds
Duets of plant-and-prayer that God would supply our needs

March teases our emotions as temperatures dip and soar
One day it kisses faces that it froze the day before 
While we, of past experience, embrace this yearly spar
Because we hear the songs of spring within its tug-of-war

March matrons pummel pillows heaped on Old Man Winter’s cot
They free a feather-frolic to a world tenderly caught
Between the throes of winter and the crocuses of spring
We smile because we know what time will most assuredly bring

...soft pussy-willow kittens, fragrant violet-starlight, strewn
Farewell to toques and mittens, hello, yellow afternoon
Pretty pink tulip chalice, in a palace fit for queens
As white on white yields to earth's brightest hues of spring's first greens 

March wakes in us a sanguine splurge of soon-emerging thrills
Like brooks bursting with babble, like hills strewn with daffodils
Like gardens ringing with reintroductions of bare feet
Like robins singing in the raindrops dancing on the street

March makes us gently gladder for fine weather yet to come
As Old Man Winter’s numbered days are dwindling one by one
We feel warm welcomes grasp our souls, we glimpse rose-gilded gates
Beneath earth’s blanket full of holes, spring’s world of wonder waits

© Janet Martin




March wakes in us a sanguine splurge of soon-emerging thrills
Like brooks bursting with babble,


We feel warm welcomes grasp our souls, we glimpse rose-gilded gates


Beneath earth’s blanket full of holes, spring’s world of wonder waits













Monday, March 15, 2021

Of Half-way and Beyond

 Happy Already-halfway-through-March?!

...prepare to meet your God.”
He who forms the mountains,
who creates the wind,
and who reveals his thoughts to mankind,
who turns dawn to darkness,
and treads on the heights of the earth—
the Lord God Almighty is his name.

Amos 4:12-13

He who turns dawn to darkness...




Already halfway through what feels like a page we just turned
Moments outpoured and shaken into lessons taught and learned
Wonderment reawakened to the way Time spills its zest
Where east horizon hoists the flare that dims upon the west
Whilst renewing the lease where dreams and circumstance compete
Then easing into archives both the bitter and the sweet

Already at the halfway point of a month just begun
As we marvel at means of ‘nothing new under the sun
While struggling with the age-old ways of trouble and success
An elemental gauge that tunes and vexes happiness
Hinged to a Higher Power, like a flower that unfolds
To strew its petals on a path that Looking Back beholds

Already halfway through what was new not so long ago
No one can tame the tides (ides) that hide a sacred undertow
As toss of seasons rolls across the moss-glossed mouths of graves
Where none but God can see that halfway point of Numbered Days
Not forward but back to the One by whose kind grace man goes

If we have passed the halfway post of three-score years and ten
Then we know we are halfway through an average life span
And whether halfway through a day or week, a month or year
We ought to be aware and prepare for Death drawing near
Before Soul slips through that which leaves all halfway points behind

© Janet Martin

Saturday, March 13, 2021

Some Of Them Are Spring

 There is so much to live for when the sun unwraps the earth


But we embrace sere sweeps to start, the heart wild with delight
At prospects of what waits beneath the waning deeps of white


Yes, we are straining at the bridle and chomping at the bit
to remove words like 'almost' and 'soon' inserted in the verses below 
From Song of Solomon 2:11-12

For, lo, the winter is (almost) past,
the rain is (soon) over and gone;
The flowers (will soon) appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds (almost) is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

Yes, in Ontario we know there will still be snow
but this bit of spring-wink the past few days has kindled the fever!

Last week I clipped some lilac and apple-tree branches and put them in a vase
...this week, a bit of indoor spring!




There is so much to live for when the sun unwraps the earth
Like a grand gift of hills and rills and woodlands primed with birth
When birdsong fills yon paling arc as darkness melts like snow
And wonder is a hunter, hungry for floral hello
And nature to put on a show of green in every shade
As bud and bulb begin to flow with posy promenade

But we embrace sere sweeps to start, the heart wild with delight
At prospects of what waits beneath the waning deeps of white
Of garden-getaways and farmers stirring sacred dust
To plant a whole new season’s worth of earth’s ‘in God we trust’
For spring will always find its way, though it may take a bit
To convince Old Man Winter we are weary of his wit

The brook bounces with ballads, bubbling, sparkling melody
After cold bars that swung ajar and set its music free
The corner of the porch where we shivered and hunched last week
Now leaves a kiss of summer on the pallid, up-turned cheek
The hour of first flowers starts to nudge, tickle and tease
Bowers of thought that long did not indulge such fantasies

There is so much to smile and dream and sing for as the world
Waves like a beaming banner beneath God’s goodness unfurled
Where joy and grief will fill the sheaf of days, but not without
The mercy of the One who turns time’s season-wheel about
And threads the lusty loom of life with multi-coloured string
That always first runs through His fingers; some of them are Spring

© Janet Martin

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Of Gray and Gold

 






At day break gold put on quite a glow 
before gray lowered/glowered to extinguished its show


Soon, should we live to see it through
Dusk will obscure dawn’s virgin view
Soon time will gather gray and gold
As chimes of tick and tock are tolled
To bygone’s immutable mold
In words we say and deeds we do

As we look back then on today
At scenes that none can brush away
Will echo-fray we leave behind
Be patient, true, gentle and kind
With fellow-trave’lers first in mind
Where gold and gray tones interplay

We cannot see what waits to be
Where gates fling wide to set it free
On teeming tides of come-what-may
We sail toward the close of day
In ebbs and flows, now gold, now gray
While making history

© Janet Martin

After a gray shower passed through
the sun has returned,
 working its golden wonders once more!




Looks like cross-country skiing is running to an end for this season...hopefully!
As much as I enjoy it I would never choose it over an early spring!


Ecccles. 3:1-8

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.


Me, with a basket of laundry to hang out
am glad for 'a time for gold'...


Little girl with a new, polka-dot umbrella, 
was wishing for 'a time for more gray plip-plop of raindrops'!
(it kinda looks like she might get her wish😊)
...looks like a true March gray-gold kaleidoscope kind of day today!


Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Season of Lion and Lamb

 Back and forth the lion paced and raged on Mar.1


Pausing at times to gather his breath...

...only to return with renewed fury!!



and then finally! nothing quite sings hallelujah like headlights turning in the driveway

seeming to say hello, we made it home!!

March opened the door with a lion's roar
But we are not too glum
Because we know March is a door
To meadows yet to come

...then came March 2nd..FRIGID but friendly!
Brusque but beautiful!

Dawn

Dusk








To everything there is a season, 
A time for every purpose under heaven:
Eccles.3:1

Upon a broader meadow now 
The lion roars, the lamb replies 
A song is born beneath a bow 
That runs across snow-tousled skies 
To tumble like a mighty stream 
Through dreams that stir from winter’s sleep 
Where slumber melts beneath the gleam 
Of hope and dusk’s gold-embossed sweep 
That toasts the lion’s noisy sham 
Before the frolic of a lamb 

Earth’s stage is set to whet the duel 
Twixt spring’s advent and winter’s leave 
Now rampant runs the heady fuel 
The sparks both ire and reprieve 
Where morning hoists a pink beach ball 
That Old Man Winter tries to pop 
But cannot scale the polished hall 
The ball rolls up too far to stop 
He throws a tantrum while spring grins 
This is a fight he never wins 

Track records sometimes take a bit 
To prove that some things never change 
In spite of howling hissy-fit 
That spills its sparks to rill and range 
No one can stay the Hand of Time 
Not winter, nay, not even spring 
The belfry from whence seasons chime 
Dangles from an ethereal string 
To set the stage where roars resound 
With meadows where lambs leap and bound 

© Janet Martin 

...and now Mar. 3 waits to make its moments known!
A pretty intro indeed!