Where Flowers Live Forever...

The flower flaunts its pretty plume

Then soon its petals wilt

Rendering back to earth the bloom

Of season-ordered lilt

The gardener walks more slowly when

The flower blooms because

She knows that soon its diadem

Will be the thing that was

And though Time commandeers the bud

…the bloom and its demise

It cannot order from our thought

The garden plot that lies…

Where flowers live forevermore

And blossoms spill their art

For memories bloom on and on

In gardens of the heart

© Janet Martin

Methinks I Sense a Kinship

Methinks I sense a kinship in your gray reluctant eyes

The colors of relinquishment are evident; your sighs

Betray you, ever waning in the rain that weeps non-stop

The flask from whence fair summer poured has drained its final drop

The gold that warmed our up-turned faces, kissed our hungry skin

Is cold, a keener nuance traces our meek chagrin

While still we strain to drain from picture-frames of nature spent

A sweeter sort of beauty in its muted filament

One by one each tree surrenders to the touch of what must be

Leaf by leaf each tear is tendered to Time’s tick-tock majesty

And methinks I sense a kinship in your lingering caress

Where letting go is simply part of love and life, I guess

© Janet Martin

Slumber-song

Autumn Lies Still…

Long the lazy laughter of its wooded hill and steep

Would lull the little boy or girl or mother fast asleep

But now the dark is empty of its softly sweeping sigh

The wide-flung window shuttered where Time open, shuts her eye

For night still bears its morning and the morning, afternoon

The tree that bore the hungry bud will sing new anthems soon

Do not despair although the air is charged with darker hours

The aftermath of what awaits will lead us back to flowers

Autumn lies still…

The gleaming rill is dappled with leaf-notes; its bank soft-lined

With amber-feathered echoes of what summer left behind

A marathon of memories and moments charge the air

Composing a strange montage of both triumph and despair

…where once we were the children splashing wind-kissed and footloose

Through leaves without much thought to hours or Time’s tightening noose

But oh, deeper appreciation of each season’s good and ill

Invites us to live, laugh and love where now autumn lies still

© Janet Martin

In Memory of Nathan Cirillo and all who pay the ultimate price for our freedom

 Image Source


Free to lie beneath the tree
and dream our dreams, in spite of tears
we walk the streets and splash through parks
where autumn gleams then disappears

Free to laugh the laughter of
the unafraid, while others die
to protect the country they love,
and thus protect both you and I

God, forgive when we forget
Freedom comes at such a price
Comfort us in this, our grief
of love's ultimate sacrifice

Janet~

Of Garnered Fields and Silvered Sedge

We didn’t know the ebb and flow

Of morn to night and blue to gold

Would weave with such unhurried ease

From bud to leaf to memories

And while we danced the dance of youth

Unhindered by Time’s timeless truth

We didn’t know how fast we’d fill

A book that opens at free will

…to spill upon thought’s cloven gaze

A filament of woven days

Where echoes wield a double edge

Of garnered field and silvered sedge

© Janet Martin

Memory Lane

In the dry part of summer

That dirt road turned to golden silk

Ribbon running through corn-clover mead

Feeding freedom in its ethereal ilk

Of unnamed destinies pooled in its thread

Bare-feet dashed, splashing

Down lanes to wild apple trees

Where picnic-baskets spilled their simple fare

In gentle childhood memories

And soda-cracker flavored air

They didn’t recognize the wealth

Of moments pressed into its grass

Where cotton-dresses seemed to shrink too fast

Beneath a blue-sky hour-glass

Insistent on replenishing the Past

…and then they grew too tall

To play where only children climb

Time’s endless afternoons without a care

Until the call of suppertime

Wafted on twilight's purple stair

..as they dashed, splashed

Through golden silk of summer shelled

And moth-balled corduroy of outgrown coats

Quite unaware of pens they held

Or little legacies they wrote

© Janet Martin

This poem took me on a sudden breath-stealing trip down memory-lane