Someday...Summer

 Watching this mega snow-blower thinking; Dear Summer...

Someday you’ll tumble through wide-open windows

Filling our laughter with sparkle and sun

Spilling your pink petal-mirth on the meadows

Where now a sonnet of snowflake is spun

Someday the highway will wind like a ribbon

…ebony shimmer of dreams to the sky

Come, gentle wind, won’t you hearken our bidding?

Lavish the air with a warm lullaby

Someday the front porch will wear kool-aid kisses

Now it is frozen in winter respite

While we dream of things the summer-heart misses

Lost in an ocean of white over white

Someday we’ll fling back these cold, frozen sashes

Thrill to the trill of your long-waited charms

While reveling in golden warmth as it splashes

Over the windowsill into our arms

© Janet Martin

Blue-collar Heroes

 

Image source

Blue-collar brave-hearts

They’ve got no medals

No badges on their

Coat-sleeves or lapels

Working class warrior

Seeking no glory

Fighting life’s battle

And doing it well

Obscure battalion

Work-force deployment

Wielding their armor

Of steering-wheel, cart

Low-dollar hero

Invisible valor

Witnessed by One

As they give from the heart

Courageous convoy

Gallant and glorious

Punching the clock

While nobody applauds

Silently sacrificing

Over and over

Second-mile soldiers because

This is love

Blue-collar brave-hearts

They’ve got no medals

No black-tie gala

Or work-hand trophy

Working class heroes

 The pulse of a nation

Fighting the battles

Of life faithfully

© Janet Martin

This is a modified re-post going out esp. for those on our winter highways and streets; patrols, truck-drivers, bus-drivers, crossing-guards, post and parcel delivery,snow-removal crews,hydro-workers and everyone trying to get to work on time!

Hang in there and Thank-you to our invisible heroes!

This Roller-coaster Rubric

Record highs and record lows

This will be the way of dust

But in spite of ebb and flows

Fear seeks faith; in God we trust

Sequences of rise-and-fall

Roller-coaster rendezvous

Surge-receding madrigal

Hallelujahs rival blues  

Gold and gray perplexing skies

Hearts weep as we hold-let-go

Still we scan our sweep of sighs

Count our blessings, not our woe

Season-rubrics vexes sod

Step by step we test its dust

Clinging to a changeless Rod

As we go; in God we trust

© Janet Martin

This morning the news speaks of record lows in temperatures and record highs coming for gas prices…We look up; in God we trust.

A slow warm-up will not be a bad thing; without it they predict drastic flooding.

Thursday Thoughts on Things Unknown

So many things uncertain, unknown

But one thing we know;

‘There’s no place like home’.

(Just had an e-mail letting us know Dad came home tonight. He was picked up this morning, came through an awful storm to find the roads closed to their home so they(mom and dad) went to my brother’s house until this evening. As he was leaving the hospital a nurse smiled at Dad and said he has the ‘breaking free’ smile. I’m sure tonight home is even sweeter though he rested well at Dave and Karen’s house.)

***

If we dwell on thunder-clouds that might unfold

We miss every joy-drop of mercy we hold

***

We cannot see beyond the moment slipping through our touch

Treasure, taste and reverence it, then leave the rest to God

***

Yesterday is over

Tomorrow; a maybe

Today is almost

A memory

***

Fear is a mountain

Dread is a stone

Faith is our foothold

Into its Unknown

***

Disappointment is always a present-past thing

Unknown is the hope to which we cling

***

We all are students

In the school of life

We didn’t know yesterday

What we do tonight

***

If I knew all I wished I knew

Of things Unknown and hidden

Then I know that what I know

I’d likely wish I didn’t

***

It is better to work with what we know

Than worry about what we don’t

Some things in time their proof will show

And some…I hope they won’t

***

If all that was left is what we know

Anticipation would lose its glow

***

How far the Unknown goes, who knows?

But this we know for sure

One life, one death, then the God we chose

Our soul-place will secure

© Janet Martin

Winter Evening and Other Things...

Piano notes clunk, plunk ripple and trill

Earth is refurbished with winter-white chill

Kettle is humming and ready for tea

Tomorrow hovers with its mystery

Dinner is over and daytime is too

Dusk drops its cover in frigid gray-blue

Today tucks memories into its fold

Tomorrow never tells what it will hold

Windows are dappled with icy chagrin

Outside the blackness of night settles in

Media repeats latest news-events

Tomorrow’s secrecy never relents

Retrospect ponders, wind wanders dark wood

Bible reminds us that still God is good

Telephone rings, we put dishes away

Tomorrow waits to become our today

© Janet Martin

We were discussing just now how it is good we don’t know what a day will bring…Who knew dawn-semi-calm would result in an all-day blizzard!?

Winter Warm-up

Put a log upon the hearth
Put a toddy in your mug
Come, let's watch wild winter's mirth
By the firelight on this rug

Put a slow song on the air
Let that blue wind seethe and whine
It is not too cold, my dear
With your whispers touching mine

Put an hour on the clock
Hang your robe where minutes fuss
Winter cannot break the lock
There is no one here...but us

Snow is cold but love is warm
Put a smile upon your lips
Ah, methinks I sense a storm
Not of flakes but fingertips

Janet~

Simple Wishes...in the Middle of Winter

…to sit upon a sun-beamed hill

And never need to move until

My cup of tea needs a re-fill

…to watch Old Winter’s bully breed

Drip, drip until spring’s sanguine seed

From Mother Earth’s dark womb is freed

…to use forgotten words like ‘spade’

And ‘gardening’ and ‘lemonade’

And ‘30 Celsius in shade’

…to hear the flap of flip-flop feet

To see noon ripple in the heat

Beneath calm, cumulus cloud-fleet

…or, just to sit upon May's hill

And listen to the lauding trill

Of morning-dove and daffodil

© Janet Martin

Ballad of Br-r-r-r

From this...

to this...

...within an hour!

Waist-deep stripped maples are rooted in white

Day-silence broken by stiff, creaking limb

Combing the air for sweet, softer respite

Naught do they find but a gale, grey and grim

Over a landscape of freshly-frothed cold

Dawn draws brief shadows in shivering gold…

We dream of green, not to pocket or spend

But that of carpets rolled out to the sky

When will the snow-dregs their last tiding send?

They spill fresh flurries in frigid reply

Combat is timid save for chimney flute

But the wind scorns its anemic dispute

Jack Frost has show-cased his art over-time

Though once he startled and awed still-life plot  

Now, how we covet the zeal of a rhyme

Dappled with violet and forget-me-not

Sallow sun bleeds through bleak, boreal blue

Before snarling storm snuffs its wick from our view

Where is the ballad of brook-song and bloom?

Where the affections of sun-kissed caress?

Is there a balm for this ice-stricken tomb?

Will gentle zephyr stroke Hope’s budded tress?

But as we reach out with numb finger-tips

Wild Old Man Winter roughly kisses our lips

© Janet Martin

Without a Kiss

How oft you come to me

And ring the morning bell

Then just as oft you slip away

Without a kiss farewell

You reach across the dark

To draw its veil ajar

Then soon it seems, soft you dissolve

Behind the evening star

I never can foretell

What nuances you bear

Or how your Master will design

The colors that you wear

But ever faithfully

Each morning you appear

To satisfy the waking hour

With laughter, song and tear

Then just as faithfully

As overhead the sky

Deepens, soft, soft you disappear

Without a kiss good-bye

© Janet Martin

We Love our Boys...

We love our boys.

Their noise,

Their toys,

Their vim,

Their grin,

A

Mother’s joys

Yes, we love our boys.

Be it

Mischief or

Mirth unfurled

A boy is surely

God’s smile

To the world

We love our boys.

…tomorrow’s men

And as those shoes

They don

I pray within them still

A little bit of boy

Lives on…

© Janet Martin

Matt loves to tease...his sister and his mother;)

(yesterday after school)  Matt; Hey Mom, what was the celery for in my lunch?

Mom; To eat.

Of Knowing and Seeking...

Lord, may it never be enough

To know You love me so

But keen my heart to seek You, Lord

In spite of what I know

Oh Lord, make me to hunger

Even as You fill my need

Lest I grow lax and simply feed

To satisfy my greed

My Lord, I know You promise

You will uphold the weak

Oh, do not make me strong enough

That I no longer seek

© Janet Martin

The Way of Life

Honey, we cannot force the road that leads through circumstance

Nor rearrange the love songs written in its bitter gale

The way of life is not a highway flung from fate or chance

But ever runs through fingers of a Hand that will not fail

Who knows what lies beyond the blush of morning’s waking hour?

The paradise of fortune is a fragile house of sand

The way of life will dip and curve through thorny field and flower

Beneath its winding Unknown spreads love’s faithful nail-scarred Hand

How hard would be this journey but for hope beyond the grave

How putrid were life’s prize if at death’s door it fell away

The way of life unfolds and we its offering must brave

But ever still a higher Hand cradles both gold and gray

Uncertainty is Wisdom’s gift that draws our boast to prayer

Honey, we cannot sidestep or desist the miles to come

The way of life is not a footloose free-fall to nowhere

But leads to where we’ll touch the Hands that led us safely Home

© Janet Martin

 Thus says the Lord: Stand by the roads and look; and ask for the eternal paths, where the good, old way is; then walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls...Jer.6:16

Kindred Souls

To touch you in this way,

To feel you there…somewhere

Beyond my window-pane, we meet

And scale hope’s common stair

The passion of a poem

Is like no other rush

Save for the artist as he spills

Thought-oceans from his brush

There are no walls out here

Let blood and ink collide

We stroll the star-strung atmosphere

And trace its turbid tide

For we are kindred souls

As heart to heart we’re held

Within the motion of a poem

Where ink and music meld

© Janet Martin

Soon Time Forgets

Dusk like a gentle mother

Gathers the day to her breast

Tucking its remnant blue blanket

‘Round little dying day’s nest

Somewhere by firelight flicker

Mothers and children play

Before bedtime stories and lullabies

Whisper frayed fragments away

Soft, like the notes of a ballad

Dripping from ethereal holds

Twilight falls over the planet

Deeper and deeper it folds

Soon time forgets this blue hour

Soon morning ruffles the air

But now, like a gentle mother

Dusk folds its fringes in prayer

© Janet Martin

Bluer and bluer dusk covers the day...

Fresh February Wishes

Ah, fill my cup with summer’s gold

These lips are numb from drinking cold

And let the blue unmingled be

With naught but sun-diamonds on sea

Then let this winter-land delight

To be shaken from robes of white

I yearn to join the eager child

Splashing through green with wonder wild

Glad, unencumbered, let it be

As river-madrigal runs free

Breathe soft into the sleeping dell

Tickle the ice-encased blue-bell

Ah, transform slope to sterling show  

Sweet sunshine, warm away our woe

And if it’s not too much to ask

Please, put some petals in your flask

Unfold upon the cheerless sky

Lilting of lark and butterfly

Stir within earth’s love-laden womb

Every bud waiting there to bloom

…and fill uplifted cups with gold

Long, long we’ve drunk these draughts of cold

Then end our season-suffering

Let every chalice brim with spring

© Janet Martin

I didn’t get any response from the sky so far; only the wind puffing snow-swirls ‘cross the field, so I pour a cup of ‘fresh’ mint tea with leaves we harvested last summer.

If We Must...

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write. If it all feels helpless, if that famous ‘inspiration’ will not come, write. If you are a genius, you’ll make your own rules, but if not—and the odds are against it—go to your desk, no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper—write.

~ J.B. Priestly

If we must…and yes, it seems we must

Persuade into a pen thought’s scraped from dust

Or siphoned from the air, life’s filigree

Of moment quick-fall sealed in poetry

The care of circumstance cleaves to our skin

Seeking to weigh our hands with living’s din

And yet, it seems we’re driven to a stage

Reserved for suffering with pen and page

We paper rooms with echoes; silence swells

With notes the aching throat and heart regales

But restless is that ever-thirsting yen

Until we fill and spill the poet’s pen

If we must…and yes, it seems we must

Spell out thought’s burning, yearning wanderlust

Oh wretched, blessed bliss to beggars born

To live somewhere twixt pulse and parchment torn

© Janet Martin

Write while the heat is in you. … The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Resting Place

 

In greater, gentler hands

Our little life is held

Therefore we need not fear nor fret

As sands and seasons meld

Beyond our craving clutch

The numbering of days

Is cradled in a Father’s touch

And guarded ‘neath His gaze

Ah, blessed resting place

Beneath this turbid clime

Abides in unwavering grace

The hand that measures Time

© Janet Martin

Someone just asked about my dad and I told her he was moved out of ICU yesterday but they are keeping close watch on a blood clot in his lungs (the reason he can’t get the oxygen he needs). I’m glad he is held in Hands much bigger than ours.

On Looking Back...

Heart-pangs of pain and pleasure clash

For feet can never run

To touch once more the gilded sash

Of past that time has spun

How subtle is the silver sweep

Of moments as they flow

Futile the fold of fist to keep

What Time cannot bestow

…but every now and then it seems

We wander down its track

To linger in its lost daydreams

As we stand, looking back

The way of life runs ever to

The setting of the sun

No returning to exchange hues

Of day when it is done

Time’s moment-mercy ruthlessly

Inhales life’s quickened hour

Reminding us mortality

Is brief as grass or flower

The trails of retrospect compete

With echoes fierce and tender

See how the dueling bittersweet

Falls in sun-shadow splendor

Heart pangs of pain and pleasure merge

A surge of want and wonder

Yet even now new moments splurge

To satisfy Time's hunger

© Janet Martin

O memory! Thou midway world

‘Twixt earth and paradise

Where things decayed and loved ones lost

In dreamy shadows rise 

Abraham Lincoln…from the poem Memory

February Fantasies...(tweaked re-post from a year ago today)

It would be fine to wander and squander

A dew-drenched, daisy-strewn dazzling new day

And fritter the glitter of freshly-hung moments

Into the nonchalant meadows of May

It would be grand to guilt-freely amble

Through giddy violet-for-get-me-not dell

Heedless of hours wielding a grim gavel

Over the vagrant and fragrant spring swell

It would be splendid to soak in sun-puddles

Teased by a zephyr with sassy-sweet mouth

Splashed with potion wrought by April’s ocean

Dancing with vagabond winds from the south

It would be sweet to languish in bare feet

Appeasing and pleasing fancy’s wanderlust

With treasure of pleasure in middle-May measure

Teasing our traipsing through daydreams of dust

It would be thrilling if mornings were willing

To pause in the spilling of Jack Frosted glow

Then dangle a spangle of spring-ribbon tangles

Or float on the froth of pink apple-bloom snow

Somewhere the splendor of buds, buxom, tender

Startles the drifter on his footloose way

We cannot hurry winter’s fretting flurry

Every February must first have its day

© Janet Martin

Of Lines, Learning and Loving

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Prov 22:6

There is a line we cannot see

Dividing weak from strong

It is a making, breaking thread

That line twixt right and wrong

...and every little boy and girl

Should earnestly be taught

About the line that first unfurls

Somewhere within our thought

Temptation is a wily chain

It dangles easily

Easing our feet across that main

Twixt right and wrong, you see

There is a line ignored by fools

And reverenced by wise

It runs a firm unbending rule

Between God's truth and lies

Pity the child who is not shown

Humble obedience

But must discover all alone

The road to consequence

Love teaches, trains and motivates

With Discipline's kind coach

For right and wrong are more than traits

Earning praise or reproach

The nature we are born with yearns

For pleasant things and fine

Blessed and best is He who learns

The truth about this line

...for this line runs along life's road

Between safety and snare

And life is more than bad or good

Oh traveler; beware

 Janet Martin

A building needs a foundation to stand,
A tree needs roots.
What happens to a child if we take both root and foundation away?

Anticipation

Someday, not very far away

As we recall the hours

We’ll smile as happily we say,

‘Today I planted flowers’

© Janet Martin

Mercy's Perpetual Providence

‘If I could turn back time’, she said

‘I’d return to that place’

But moments do not reimburse

Or barter with their grace

Mercy’s perpetual providence

Moments; brief yet benign

And only in our looking back

Do we see their design

How miniscule the offering seems

In tick-tock allotment

How easily Time spills its reams

Without acknowledgement

But oh, the tempo of that tide

When gathered in the past

Returns oft to remind us how

Moments slip by so fast

‘If I could turn back time’, she said

‘I’d return to that place’

Oh, treasure carefully the Now

Ere new moments give chase

© Janet Martin

My daughter lost a friend she knew briefly and oh, so dearly! They counseled together at camp for 3 weeks and kept in touch through letters. Yesterday this girl’s life of up-hill moments ended tragically and far too soon!

In her Facebook tribute to Jess, Melissa used the words, ‘if I could turn back Time and return to that place’…

This poem spoke to me today...

Sometime

May Riley Smith (1842?–1927)

SOMETIME, when all life’s lessons have been learned,
And sun and stars forevermore have set,
The things which our weak judgments here have spurned,
The things o’er which we grieved with lashes wet,
Will flash before us, out of life’s dark night,
As stars shine most in deeper tints of blue;
And we shall see how all God’s plans are right,
And how what seems reproof was love most true.
And we shall see how, while we frown and sigh,
God’s plans go on as best for you and me;
How, when we called, he heeded not our cry,
Because his wisdom to the end could see.
And e’en as prudent parents disallow
Too much of sweet to craving babyhood,
So God, perhaps, is keeping from us now
Life’s sweetest things, because it seemeth good.
And if sometimes, commingled with life’s wine,
We find the wormwood, and rebel and shrink,
Be sure a wiser hand than yours or mine
Pours out this potion for our lips to drink.
And if some friend we love is lying low,
Where human kisses cannot reach his face,
Oh, do not blame the loving Father so,
But wear your sorrow with obedient grace!
And you shall shortly know that lengthened breath
Is not the sweetest gift God sends his friend,
And that, sometimes, the sable pall of death
Conceals the fairest bloom his love can send.
If we could push ajar the gates of life,
And stand within, and all God’s workings see,
We could interpret all this doubt and strife,
And for each mystery could find a key.
But not to-day. Then be content, poor heart!
God’s plans like lilies pure and white unfold.
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart,
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.
And if, through patient toil, we reach the land
Where tired feet, with sandals loosed, may rest,
When we shall clearly know and understand,
I think that we will say, “God knew the best!”

Air-brushed Perfection

 After the potpourri of weather we had at the end of last week one can ski for literally miles on works of unframed art!

How fondly He must move the sky

To know what thus ensues

As wind and rain and snow and sun

Earth’s dormant dell imbues

This canvas blooms with raw design

Original and rare

Where elements and God align

His brush, nothing but air

He startles slopes with naught but thought

Should I remove my shoes?

To tread these master-pieces wrought

Of silvers, whites and blues?

We cannot dream such works as this…

Free-falling filigree

In swirling, twirling twist of mist

Earth touts His majesty

…and we like daily strangers come

To marvel at His thought

Where handiwork of season-song

Spills to man’s plebeian plot

Our labor, clad with common care

Dons a divine purport

We serve the One who moves the air

In grand, un-fathomed art

© Janet Martin