Sometimes the Past Feels Like a Dream...

Psalm 116:13

I will lift up the cup of salvation

and call on the name of the Lord.

(read the whole glorious chapter HERE)

The pink-bud blaze

before first-leaf green haze...

Sometimes the past feels like a dream or scenes an artist drew

Its measure of moments like mist of seasons spilled and spent

Like Aprils, marbled into blurs of green, gold, gray and blue

Or like a book we read but could not keep, a volume lent

The joys of life teach us to sing, its griefs teach us to pray

To lift salvation’s cup and call upon the name of God

The older that I get the more I attend to Today

Before its dust settles in Past’s impenetrable sod

Sometimes the panoramas of What Once Was steals my breath

Like fragments of a melody, I have not heard in years

Rekindling awed awareness of time’s daily birth and death

Of eulogies composed of words and deeds, laughter and tears

Sometimes the past feels like a dream of flowers smelled and felled

Or snowflakes hardly held before they melt into thin air

Today is like a ballad borne on notes that play then meld

To mosaics of sound and sight that slipped from here to there

© Janet Martin

Sometimes the past feels like a dream of flowers smelled and felled...

Before Sentimental Surprise Took Me In Its Embrace...

poem-a-day challenge from Robert Lee Brewer @ Writer's Digest

For today's prompt, write a memory poem. 

My husband wants to get rid of

what he sees as a gnarly eye sore...

and I see as a work of art...

both Season-art and Memory-art.

maybe because another old apple tree 

from my childhood made me see this one

through wizened eyes...

This tree my Grandpa planted,

long before we bought it when we bought their house...

this tree my children climbed,

and now my grandchildren,

along with many others that passed through my care

Here's a bit of season-memory art...

I didn't know the apple tree 

of long ago would bend

With summer fruit, 

long after the pursuits

Of youth would end 

I didn't know the tree that taught

Us how to work and play

where apples fell 

like yellow snow

would never go away

...where mother's apron bulged as we

Helped fill its cotton cart

With pungent gold,

That we could hold

Forever in the heart  

Before I was blindsided by

Moment's momentous haste

 I thought that Time 

was on my side

With quite enough to waste

Before sentimental surprise

Took me in its embrace

And showed to me 

An apple tree

Is never commonplace

© Janet Martin

This photo and memory tidbit from a previous post HERE

The Harvest-apple tree on the old home place.
How well I remember its petal-snow,

before the dirt floor was covered in golden fruit, 

gathered up in our cotton-dress 'baskets'

 carried to the house for apple goodies, 

but mostly canned apple sauce.

Ode to Father Time

Dear Father Time...

I never tire of your ways...

Your sweet and sun-steeped golden days...(today, a balmy 20C)

Your contours, swaddled in soft grays...

Your landscapes, washed in pink...

A quick pit-stop for supper and off again)

Spring is like a dog straining wildly at its leash today!

I never tire of your ways

Your sweet and sun-steeped golden days

Your contours, swaddled in soft grays

Your landscapes, washed in pink

Your rough-and-tumble give and take

Your waves that sob and surge and break

Across shorelines that gleam and ache

With untamed poem-ink

I never tire of your hymn

It trembles in the barren limb

And throbs as buds begin to brim

With orchestras of green

With daybreak’s lilac-tinted sighs

And twilight’s gentle lullabies

With hellos, harboring goodbyes

With all that falls between

I never tire of your waltz

Your minuet and somersaults

Your promenade that never halts

But twirls me round and round

Till I am breathless with delight

Yet never tire of the sight

Of you, gilt-edged ‘gainst gath’ring night

Of a new day unbound

I never tire of your ease

Turning moments to memories

Taming my younger-hungered pleas

With humble thankfulness

My cheek against your stubbly chin

Ah, darling, how can I begin

To count your ways I cannot win

Yet love you nonetheless

© Janet Martin

Fond Yonder-World of 'Soon'

Yesterday afternoon on our south-facing deck in a cozy crook of sunshine

 I wiggled my toes (and blew my nose, due to sudden head cold) 

profoundly taken by an immense Sense of Impending Soon!

Celestial rivers meandered overhead...

Perhaps, due in part because

it's been a less-than-normal snowy winter so far,

stoking thoughts with bucolic scenes of 'Soon'

In a fond, yonder-world of ‘Soon’

Unravels summer’s afternoon

Uncurls a river, silver-bent

Unfurls earth’s mirth of winter spent

Unwinds a lane, wildflower-fringed

Beyond a gaping gate unhinged

Leading through lilac hedge and tress

To front row seats to happiness

To loiter where daffodils sway

To climb the young, green hills of May

To leap like lambs, with joy because

The world rings/sings with Winter That Was

...where pockets jingle, full of June

In a fond, yonder-world of ‘soon’

Where brooks chuckle, content to glide

Without hype, through the countryside

To welcome we who once were wishin’

For yellow dusk, perfect for fishin’

For zephyr-soft caress to brush

Our pallid cheek with sun-kissed flush

And to be humbled by a prize

Of bursting buds beneath blue skies

And to be sweetly glad because

Twilight is later than it was

…where the fond, yonder-world of ‘Soon’

That cheered a dull, chill afternoon

Has rent the veil that held at bay

Laughter of barefoot child at play

And countless little pleasantries

Bidding us take an hour’s ease

To revel ‘neath the influence

Of bloom-imbibed exuberance

Enchanted by a brimming world

Of nature’s orchestras unfurled

In melodies and colours of

A Composer whose name is Love

…who stirs in us a yearning croon

For a fond, yonder-world of ‘Soon’

Where pastures green and waters still

Unmarred by grief and pain will spill

Where farewell’s tear will never dim

The eye, no solemn parting hymn

Will sever ties that briefly bound

Us to a time, four-season-crowned

With here and there a glimpse for we

Who dream of how Heaven will be

Then faith does not lose heart because

Soon this will be the world that was

© Janet Martin

With here and there a glimpse for we

Who dream of how Heaven will be...

Heaven-

Rev.21:4

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. 

There will be no more death 

or mourning 

or crying 

or pain,

 for the old order of things 

has passed away.”

Because a Person Could Get Lost...

 

The older we grow the swifter years fly!!

This poem began to niggle yesterday evening, on a sunset walk, alone

on a lane that over the years has seen many a youngster racing ahead of me...

A person could get lost while wandering backward through the years

While tracing moments embossed on a tide of smiles and tears

Where seasons slipped through fingers of sunrise and shadow-fall

Till, commonplace we realize, is not common at all

Duty and beauty interlace, weaving life’s aftermath

A person could get lost while grieving bygone’s joy-worn path

Where if we are not wary, we could miss the moment gold

That no miser can bury and no wishful thinking hold

Rather than ruminate about a world that is no more

This day the Lord has made is rolling west from eastward shore

And just as surely as the rest it will slip out of reach

So then, I want to try my best to learn what it would teach

…because a person could get lost in fond futility

While wand’ring backward through a world of glossed imagery

Better to focus on Today, because it is a gift

That all too surely slips away to yester-worlds adrift

© Janet Martin

a few 'wandering backward' shots...

Moment-sum Momentum or Pleasure of Enough

I linger intentionally these days;

days that time flies through!

'oops! Sorry gramma!'

He kissed Baby Jesus and said 'nap' and put Him back to His mommy😘😍

...suddenly the momentum of moment-sums soft-rouse

A kinship with November’s sparser sweeps...

 and barren boughs...

I linger more; I cannot bear to hurry you because

You slip through hearts and fingers like autumn’s dying applause

Of wind-strummed leaf and harvest’s remnant sheaf, frost-brittle where

Not long ago you frolicked on spring meadows, green and fair

…and trembled in bud-bowers full of flowers to unfold

You tickled us with hours while turning the new year old

You leaped from fallow furrows, clothed earth in a gleaming gown

Before we sheared each field like sheep, and begged of you, ‘slow down’

Sometimes we mourn the way you steal the seasons you beget

Yet in your age-old ways you heal the very wounds you let

With rise and fall and ebb and flow of morn to eventide

You tame once hurried footsteps; bid us to regard each stride

…and so I linger more, while you run fearless fingers through

The tatters of a sigh, an autumn sky deep, denim-blue

Where suddenly the momentum of moment-sums soft-rouse

A kinship with November’s sparser sweeps and barren boughs

Dear Father Time, each season awes us with so much to love

And so I slow my pace to taste The Pleasure of Enough

And linger more to look and feel and learn what you would teach 

Before moment-momentum melds to reels beyond my reach

© Janet Martin

You leaped from fallow furrows, clothed earth in a gleaming gown

Before we sheared each field like sheep, and begged of you, ‘slow down’...

Our neighbor's dog is our dog too esp. when it comes to treats!

 He knows if he waits long enough

Mrs. Janet will, without fail, find a treat for him😅😂💓

and he is always eager to give me a big, wet, smelly farm-dog kiss of appreciation

(if I let him😝)

Like Nature's Rendition of The Last Post

 

Something about the early dark of November kindles nostalgia...

Sometimes, like an old song a bygone era reappears

To replay on a phantom stage fond scenes of yesteryears

To coax back into being what will never be again

Save in a book of memories we open now and then

If only to remind ourselves not to get lost too long

In the bittersweet ballad of an intangible song

Wafting upon the starkness of an Autumn eventide

After leaf-notes have fluttered from the treetops where they sighed

...all summer long, like a love song we took for granted till

Whispers were winnowed one by one and everything was still

Save a gripping rendition of the Last Post being played

For fallen leaves; and moments and the melodies they made

© Janet Martin