Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Ah, Summer's World





Ah, summer-world, a bud uncurled
In nature’s unfurled sigh
As fallow-seas rush out with ease
To tease the pleasing sky


Ah, dust-sweet joys and barefoot boys
And noise of cricket-throng
They brush the heart with sanguine art
And tilt its cup in song

Ah, green to gold to rust unfolds
The dust that holds the pen
That writes upon the azure yon
Then rolls it up again

Ah, ebbing flow of hold-let-go
Ah, favored stepping-stone
Embellished with dew-stars, a frith
That bleeds with winter’s bone



Ah, beaming bloom and teeming room
We dream at noon because
Too soon this splay of gold turns gray
In summer’s world that was

© Janet Martin

Chrysalis...or Fourteen




Poised on joys of girlhood
She chatters, dream-wild
Within struggles a stranger
Half woman, half child

Dancing on a threshold
Caught between two worlds
Torn twixt morrow’s mating call
And yesterday’s girl

Trying to become Her
She which waits to be
Chrysalis of innocence
Holds maturity

Laughing, singing, fretting
Somewhere in between
Woman’s world and childhood
Ah, this is fourteen

© Janet Martin


 She chatters non-stop, all the way home, detailing the events of a week-end away...


I listen,
caught between her words
and her voice,
having been taught
through experience
that butterflies
fly 
away...

Monday, August 3, 2015

Cut Down to Sacred Sighs...




 This wee creature, out of our reach to free it eventually became...duck's breakfast:)


Oh, let us never grow too tall
To marvel at the smallest small
Or wonder at the communal
Old newness hung from season-strings
For, as we pause to recognize
The awesome laws of earth and skies 
We will not help but realize
The treasure in time’s simple things

…and how the gift of moment-gold
Though we may think it makes us old
Is but that strange and vital part
To keep us ever young at heart

© Janet Martin

Reveling in the return of cricket-song and a throng of other summer-sweets.


Psalms 8

 Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
    in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants
    you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
    to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?[c]
You have made them[d] a little lower than the angels[e]
    and crowned them[f] with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under their[g] feet:
all flocks and herds,
    and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.
Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Sunday, August 2, 2015

In The Skin of You and I...



Mayor Neil Driscoll wins this class...

This waning garb of skin
That we inhabit here
Before the Whole of Life begins
In death will disappear

This prelude to it all
Is of dire import
For everyone will hear The Call
That cometh from the Lord

Then, face to face with He
Who died so we may live
Each one will hear on bended knee
The verdict He will give

…there is a Promised Land
There is a Promised Lake
The soul’s inheritance depends
Upon A Choice we make

….in waning garbs of skin
Where flesh is bound to die
But oh, never the soul within
The skin of you and I

© Janet Martin


At last night's truck/tractor-pull, young, old and in-between gathered to cheer on competitors bound for what the announcer dubbed ‘The Promised Land’ …the 300 foot mark indicating a Full Pull.
…and many times the crowd heard the announcer declare ‘ that they were just shy of the Promised Land’.
 In tractor- pull terms this simply means waiting ‘til the next pull to try again.
Not so in that Once For All Call to Eternity

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Hidden Harbor

Between thunderstorms July gathered the hem of her golden evening-gown and disappeared into a blaze of glory...


All things come but to pass
Ethereal escapade
This very moment I hold fast
Hastens to its parade

From Here to There, how swift
What is becomes what was
This very afternoon adrift
On twilight’s faint applause

Parting’s presumptuous pain
Patterns its warlike art
Upon the dark; something like rain
Falls heedless from the heart

…where all things come to pass
Time follows time, but I
Would like to find the hour-glass
That harbors sweet July

© Janet Martin


On the last day of July I always feel like I'm at a farewell party. Do you?