Saturday, March 3, 2012

Flash-back...edited

A glimmer from the stars above

It is a tender song of love
And sometimes it makes me cry
I hear upon its plaintive moan
Words like ‘gone’ and ‘missing you’

And in its rippling undertone
The night blue……
Ballad of the wind

Seems to me there’s going to be
A continual encore
Music of a rolling sea
Or waves upon a distant shore
And I’m thinking that this song
Can not find a way to end
I will listen all night long
It’s become a sort of friend…….
Ballad of the wind

It’s a chuckle and a sigh
A ripple, and a rush, a roar
It’s ‘hello darling’ and ‘good-bye’
But oh, I think it’s so much more
Its ‘do you really need to go?’
‘When will I see you again?’
I hear the music start to blow…….
In the ballad of the wind
Oh, ballad of the wind

It’s a lonesome lullaby
Crooning from the star-strewn hill
It’s a love song from the sky
Pleading when the night is still
I would dance a little while
On some cold and darkened plain
To the music of your smile
And the ballad of the wind
Oh, the ballad of the wind

Friday, March 2, 2012

Time-song


The exodus of winter
Becomes spring’s arrival
But we cannot see time’s nimble-soft feet
Or the spawning of moments
As they tumble and trickle
Translucent as wind-song that sallies and sweeps
In ageless anthems
Across ambling waters
Teasing the travel of childhood’s wee brook
Folding to history
Its innocent chatter
Winding through pasture and timber-lined nook

Moments form ages
Yet age is a moment
When weighed in the balance with eternity
Time rolls toward us
From ethereal oceans
Dissolving on shores of infinity
We cannot leap forward
To the unknown before us
Nor turn again to its measure when past
But oh, what a wondrous
Perpetual chorus
Flows from the grace of the First and the Last

Departure, arrival
Mystic paradigm
As springtime evolves into summer’s blue haze
Yet still moments spiral
The essence of time
Forming life’s minutes, then hours, then days
Spinner of seasons
And lifetimes and centuries
Joy and grief rival in pleasure perplexed
Moment by moment
The edge of eternity
Closes the gap twixt this life and the next

© Janet Martin

I looked at these old trees and the ageless brook,
existing in nothing
but a sequence of moments.
How gracious God is...He doesn't shove life at us
in one huge lump, but in tender little moments.
Wonderful nuggets of potential. Even this mighty tree began as a tiny seed.







The Other Guy


Today I was the other guy
I watched myself as I walked by,
Today I got a chance to see
What others saw as I watched me,
Today truth opened up my eyes
As I stood with the other guys

I received the words today,
That thoughtlessly I toss away,
As I stood with the other guys
And truth stared back into my eyes
Beneath the candor of my touch
I wasn’t sure I liked me much

I got my own advice today,
I could not turn and walk away,
As I stood with the other guys
And watched me through a stranger's eyes
I blush a little now in shame
As I hear me speak my name

I used to wish that I could see
Perhaps, what others thought of me,
But now as I am standing here
I wish that I could disappear
Today I opened up my eyes
As I stood with the other guys

Janet~

Another attempt at the Anaphora Poem

Yesterday's Girl


Don’t go, not yet, I’ll miss you so much
Don’t go: Oh why are you in such a rush
Don’t go; the music insists that we dance
Don’t go; I beg of you one second chance

Please stay; I reach to restrain your feet
Please stay; for the hour is tender and sweet
Please stay; but you turn with a skip and a twirl
I wave farewell to yesterday’s girl

Janet~

Thursday, March 1, 2012

My Apolgy to my Writer's Group

I have discovered for the ump-teenth time
There is really no home for the poet of rhyme
And while I admit I have much to learn
There is a barred pasture for which I yearn
Where Tennyson, Long-fellow and Blake recline
Among all the great masters of rhythm and rhyme

My admiration runs deep for the artist of prose
The skill of their quill; the metaphorical rose
I strive to be brave enough to venture among
The haiku, cinquain, nonet, tanka song
But when I have wandered their courtyards sublime
I return once again to the pastures of rhyme

Beauty is in the eye of beholder, its true
I have understood as I beheld the senyru
And marveled at the tools of simplicity
Creating pure, breath-taking imagery
I bow my head, the truth now I know it
Dare I to call myself a poet?

Yet happily I gather words in my thought
Dither about for the elusive jot
I care not so much about status or title
The lure of words cannot keep my thought idle
Am I a poet or merely a shadow
Drifting in bliss through a wide open meadow?

So while some may gag at rhyme’s stringent plot
I have not learned how to un-rhyme my thought
Over and over I am lured by its dance
Yet drawn simultaneously by free-verse romance
So quietly I sit at the back of the room
Happy to observe poet’s in full bloom

© Janet Martin

I am blessed to be in a wonderful Writer's Group!

Glynis, I am not afraid of rejection
but I have not the slightest sense of direction.

Most publishers prefer the free verse, not rhyme
I think I was born in the wrong frame of time
So I must study prose's secret ingredient
For I have no free verse I consider expedient
to offer up to a publisher at this time.
You see, I tend to be a poet of rhyme:)
I'm posting this selfishly to ease my injured pride
before I see you tomorrow night...

sigh, I think sometimes
I think in rhymes...


Mount Kilimanjaro

Written for Poetic Bloomings prompt: Where the rubber meets the road

You didn’t tell me,
Though I came right away
When you told me
That they would take us
To the summit of
Mount Kilimanjaro

We climb away
Past the shadows
Flickering with wildebeest
And skulking hyena
Away from their whimpering
Childish cries

Above the moody landscape
Of burnt grass and bamboo slopes
Golden-red in the pining sun
Past the stench of rotting carcasses
To the coveted top
Of Mount Kilimanjaro

How I wanted to see it
That white square
Transforming to a coral sea
As the sun sets
Above a layered landscape
Of muted blue and green

You told me once
That something foreign
Occupied the space in you
Once filled with life
…but you didn’t tell me
You came up here
To Mount Kilimanjaro
To die

Janet

I was stunned the first time I read Hemingway’s
The Snow’s of Kilimanjaro.


Breath-notes in Life's Song

 Jon Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson

They tumble in between us
Good-bye still warm upon the air
Expanding in each heart-beat
And I don’t think they are aware
Of my sentimental wishes
Borne upon a stringent breeze
As I reach but cannot touch
The moments shaping memories

J~



Perfect, Infallible Survival Kit


It has everything we will ever need
It is both Water and Living bread
The tender Teacher in our strife
It is our refuge, strength and light
It is life’s compass, it is powerful and true
It is our rest and our Guide
It is the faultless Word of God

© Janet Martin

Survival

Today I must survive on the bare necessities

Your eyes
your lips
your hands
your thoughts
and words
your touch

oh, what a beautiful survival kit
the dawn is still dark
there is no one here but us
I suggest desperate survival measures

J~

Morning without You


Dawn’s bolder intrusion pries
Blissful slumber from my eyes
I tug the warmth of sweet repose
Across my skin and hold you close
But consciousness pulls you from me
Dreams cannot bar reality
As morning light fingers the air
I hold you softly in a prayer

J~

The Sonnet of Still-song


The rain has ceased its miniature applause
Night’s hush is amplified in silver mist
Its scarf concealing blatant noon-day flaws
Intimidating North wind’s bully fist
The ragged edges of a fading day
Hesitate briefly; then slip to the deep
Tomorrow hovers, half a night away
Beyond the argent hills of tallied sheep
The silence plays a soulful melody
It rolls across the valley, hill and lea

The knife-edged blue softens its keenness now
As still of midnight rouses reverence
The rise and fall of longing sweeps earth’s prow
In passion searching for deliverance
Within this temple built of grass and sky
The shepherd of a thousand hills presides
Sacred extolment ripples in the sigh
Of rain-drenched willow-limbs and country-sides
Motionless, spectral legions sweep the sod
In secret thoughts of love and loss and God

The still-song of the darkness steals my breath
Its ghostwriter and maestro void of word  
Whist passages of time drip from the earth
In compositions felt rather than heard
A stray leaf wavers, circles on the air
Then spirals in an eighth note to the ground
It strikes the perfect chord, somehow, somewhere
I revel in the silver-threaded sound
Of still-song trickling from the astral stage
In choruses without author or age

© Janet Martin

After the sound of freezing rain
Pelting on the window-pane
The night’s still-song is amplified
Sweeping the misty country-side…