Showing posts with label trees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trees. Show all posts

Friday, June 23, 2023

Wonder-Thunder

 





That I should have 
the benefit
Of strolling beneath 
lofty trees
With eyes to see
 the height of it
And ears to hear 
the sighing breeze
And ink to spell
 the sight of it
And thought to fill 
with wonder’s verve
And drink in 
the delight of it
Is so much more than
 I deserve

© Janet Martin




Monday, October 12, 2020

Nothing Puts Us At Ease Like a Trek Among Trees

 

Nothing puts us at ease like a trek among trees...





 


the woods I was in today wasn't quite as colorful as the one from the other day
so I'm tucking in some of those shots for a pop of colour!



nothing puts us at ease like leaf-canopies...


 

nothing puts us at ease like stature of trees...






....where the hill and the field culled of earth's goodly yield
evokes a most conflicting tide...




Nothing puts us at ease like a trek among trees 
In autumn apparel bedecked 
Nothing satisfies hearts like the ache earth imparts 
As farewell spills in thrills unchecked 
Where the hill and the field culled of seed’s goodly yield 
Evokes a most conflicting tide 
As bitter and sweet with equal force compete 
In autumn’s arid countryside 

Nothing puts us at ease like the fine harmonies 
Of wind-song from wood-calliope 
Where over our heads the lofty lintel sheds 
Fall’s Magnum Opus, note by note 
A kaleidoscope swirling hunger and hope 
Into a heartache-humbled hymn 
As the hierarchy of time’s supremacy 
Beams bold on the red and gold limb 

Nothing puts us at ease like simple luxuries 
We take out of doors to full-taste 
Where the nip in the air grips and makes us aware 
Of preciousness we dare not waste 
Nothing woos and consoles like the anthem that tolls 
From fall’s late-day gold-dappled eaves 
Where change cannot faze or estrange nature’s ways 
Emphasized in soft-falling leaves 

Nothing puts us at ease like the stature of trees
Though they make us feel oh, so small
Nothing puts us at ease like cool sass in the breeze
Rousing a rush of pure fall
Nothing puts us at ease like autumn canopies
In orange-scarlet-yellow tat 
Nothing puts us at ease like a trek among trees
On a crunchy and colorful mat 


© Janet Martin 







Monday, April 23, 2018

Tree

PAD Challenge day 22. For today’s prompt, pick a plant, make it the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Pick a favorite vegetable or fruit, a flower, a tree, even a shrubbery.

I chose Tree in memory of our red maple and silver birch, that are no more...

In April we begin eying spring's tree,
hungry for the music of leaf-melody!

A week ago we were watching our trees anxiously
as lofty limbs sagged beneath baggage of ice and snow...
...and praying history would not repeat itself!

Dear Tree,
like stalwart sentinels you stand
unflinching through the years
to guard the yard or line the lane
with leafy belvederes

you wear each season well, my lovely
weaver of the bow'r
sometimes you sport a snowy shrug
sometimes green leaf and flow'r

In brawny arms you cradle dreamers
lured to your fixed pose 
You, bearer of the childhood swing
and spring's first dainty rose

... and something 'bout your steadfastness
seeps into memories
where the backdrop to happiness
is oft wove through with trees

...a stark, gray leaflorn labyrinth
or froth of chartreuse tress
before red, orange and cinna-bronze
dwindles to quietness

where summer slides its zephyr-bow
 above soft shadows flung
As melodies, now high, now low
from wooded breath are wrung

...where silver quivered, pooled and slipped
like elfin-feet a-dance
until the test of time undid
your patriotic stance

'ere arms that held the trilling bird
and withstood nature's ire
lie, like shards of earth's broken heart
to feed the winter fire

 ...and we mourn thee, fair minstrel
of midnight's plush lullaby
 where your felled lyre leaves nothing but
A big hole full of sky

Janet~



Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Is Love


PAD Challenge day 26: For today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
  • Write a love poem. Or…
  • Write an anti-love poem. 



Like root bears the trunk
And trunk bears the limb
And limb bears the leaf
And leaf bears the hymn
Is love

© Janet Martin

Love is a fine intermingling of holding and letting go...

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Sitting Among Sages







To book and keep a date with trees
Is quite imperative, my dear
For they say more with bend of breeze
Than peopled mouths preach in a year

Hush; hush thy rush of ordained mist
Come, pause beneath Jehovah’s laud
Of patriarchal pacifists
Ever reaching upward to God

Put down thy weight of daily dues
Those Mores will wait; wander the wood
For soft the gate of twilight hues
Swings shut upon our 'But' and 'Should'

So, when you plan your day or week
Amidst enlisted loyalties
If you wish to hear sages speak
Then spend an afternoon with trees

© Janet Martin




Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Like a Tree...





To you
I am like a tree
My limbs are all you see
You do not see the roots, the core
Or love’s leaf-tears scattered on the floor

And oh, you
Do not hear
Life’s summer-song echoing of years
Nor do you see the sapling at my knee
Reaching, ever reaching for youth’s cupped eternity

And you
Do not know
How swift a tree can grow
All you see is rain and sun and snow
As days to weeks to seasons flow

No, to you
I am like a tree
My limbs are the only thing you see
…and I am content to hold you in my seasoned arms
For soon enough you must learn to weather your own storms

© Janet Martin

Friday, February 21, 2014

Dear Little Tree...



 October...
 November...
 December...
 January...
February 

 ...the trees have been tested this year with everything winter could throw at it and our 24 hr. mild spell (a degree or two above freezing) is plunging today and for the coming week so no pretty green dress-buds in sight yet...
This morning...

Dear little tree
How long you’ve borne the thrust of winter’s will
How long you’ve worn its garb of white
And suffered its blue chill

Dear little tree,
You stand knee-deep in nature’s cloak resigned
You do not shake your limbs at God
But wait for zephyrs kind

Dear little tree,
You seem to know it is no use to rant
How futile to rebel to snow
And sundry season-chant

Dear little tree,
You’ve suffered long and yet methinks I hear
Within your stilly wood a song
Of springtime drawing near

© Janet Martin

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Charcoal Flower-gardens



 Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own. ~CHARLES DICKENS~

 Pristine; pencil-patterns
Lure the wand’ ring eye
To charcoal flower-gardens
Etched against the sky

Nature spares not one season
But stuns our eager gaze
With beauty beyond reason
In rampant God-spun ways

The tree that bore bud-jewel
Then fanned the weary brow
Before its grand apparel
Fell, just before the snow…

…is not stripped, then forgotten
But spreads its filigree
Like charcoal flower-gardens
Across earth’s frozen lea

© Janet Martin

Hubby simply shakes his head when I laugh out loud in disbelief because a barren tree can be so breath-taking-ly beautiful!


Friday, November 9, 2012

When He is Gone...

Poetics Aside Prompt: use the words when he is gone anywhere in a poem.



When he is gone...
That laughing, little lad
The tree pines for those hours
That once they had

When he is gone
The air is heavy with a pall
Akin to absence of leaf-song
In the latter part of fall

When he is gone
That 'little boy blue'
The tree pines for his return
And perhaps his mother too

Janet~

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Naught, but the Hours That Haste





I dream of apple trees
Heady with pink froth of spring
And beneath, on its petal-blanket
We arrest moment-offerings
Before the hour devours
Its fragrance from our lips
And bends the apple orchard
With fruit that autumn strips

I dream of a cup spilling over
With fragments of faded years
Time masquerades as a lover
While a lifetime disappears
Yet eagerly he insists on bringing
New flavors I must taste
While heedless, I am clinging
To naught but the hours that haste



© Janet Martin

Monday, October 29, 2012

The Imminence of Autumn-past







The cold wind broods in morose moans
Its iron-girded stance
No longer frolics o’er the stones
In willow-song romance
But tugs and tears fragmented leaf
From stiff, saturnine limb
As heaven sheds its torrent-grief
From dark, nocturnal scrim

The imminence of autumn-past
Seethes in the evergreen
Its petulance an icy mast
Of purple-frosted sheen
The skyline seals its sullen dome
A scowl upon its face
And suddenly the hearth of home
Beckons with warm embrace

Somewhere the languid sigh of spring
Cajoles the budded strand
And lovers, carefree and laughing
Meander, hand in hand
Somewhere in distant, dew-drenched fields
The sanguine sunbeams drip
While here the barren landscape yields  
To Old Man Winter’s grip

© Janet Martin


 We are bracing ourselves for Hurricane Sandy! I didn't know what to do with all the leaves we raked up the other day...I guess now I'll wait and see what Sandy does with them:)

I pray for those without 'home' to go to during miserable weather. Please be warm, dry and safe.




Wednesday, October 24, 2012

The Darkling Day...






Yellow leaves dive past my windowsill
Like drunken finches pitching to their rest
They pile in pungent layers on the hill
Where musty patchwork quilts a sodden nest
Two seasons worth the chill-wind starves and fasts
Its vigor now turns vulgar, desperate; harsh
It tugs in bullish rage fall’s flimsy mast
And decks with gold, the street, the field, the marsh
As cattails shiver in its iron wrath
The milk-weed spills to sea a silver path

Stark silence threads stripped limbs, exposed and bare
Betrayed by tresses, scattered and wind-blown
If glory to the woman is her hair
Then beauty to the tree must be its gown
The lowered sky offers no modest shroud
But rather it enhances her distress
A backdrop dark; of tumbled glow’ring cloud
Appropriates the ruddy wind’s caress
It sets against the cold horizon-line
Her petrified, yet delicate design

The pasture boasts a shrug of startled green
A folly of ephemeral disguise
Brief is the comfort of deception’s sheen
Too soon beneath an argent sheet it lies
Yellow leaves tumble to earth's ready tomb
Swift, phantom fingers pluck ragged remains
None shall escape the purple-knuckled plume
Of grumbling gale  and raw November rains
As they succumb to winter’s calliope
Waiting for Spring in womb's of quiet hope

© Janet Martin