Wild-rose

...and they coax her to 'come! Come to this mall and that mall and see what money can buy! Run to the coffers of jingle; fill your fingers with its lie... but she knows a mall of green field and blue sky where wealth is a wonder money cannot buy...

She is wild rose

Wandering

In a garden

Whispering

Muted things

Pen must descry

Of melody

Coin cannot buy

She is bond-servant

Of quill

Not by force

But her free will

Wild-rose wandering

The wind

In the willow

Understands

She is loyal

To the trust

Of a poet’s

Wanderlust

Wild-rose ever

She will be

Beggar-bloom

Of poetry

© Janet Martin

Amiss

Ah, we would wander quite amiss

If we forget to cherish this

Of moment-mist as day soft-kissed

Becomes the thing the night resists

Before the dark unveils its face

To grant another day of grace

Time’s showcase where life’s finer things

Tug season-tides and tied heart-strings

Would be an insult to the air

If we forget to linger there

To trace a hemline not of chance

But mercy-metered song and dance

Love, wrought within and God-beget

Illiterate, unlearned and yet

Like ether oceans unconfined

Perplexes heart and vexes mind

Rushing where God alone can see

Our wisdom-wanton misery

This universal longing dwells

Where Time's prescription never quells

The war of holding-letting go

And we, unlearned in things of soul

Covet, yet curse its gripping grief

Where love is both angst and relief

Yet, we would wander quite amiss

If we forget to cherish this

Of morning rolling like a wave

Across the utmost that we crave

Ancient, its virgin offering breaks

Anew upon past’s muted lakes

© Janet Martin

Blue Somewhere

Somehow you know those things I know

Disguised as holding-letting go

When all the while in every mile

Life’s bittersweet of bygones grow

And where time drew apart the air

That held fragments of heart and prayer

I knew you knew and were there too

In azure hue of blue somewhere

J~

Some sentimental blue on a moody summer night...

Unchained Melody

With What We've Got

To envy someone else

For all that we have not

Is but to waste our very best

…we work with what we’ve got

We cannot rearrange

What gone-and-done has wrought

And all that we can ever do

Is work with what we’ve got

No one has everything

Though it may tease our thought

To think they do; ‘tis vain

We work with what we’ve got

Someday we will account

Not for what we have not

But for our everyday response

To work with what we’ve got

© Janet Martin

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve Col. 3:23-24

On Happiness

Time's Darling

The earth is full of green

And where its nuance glows

The bud unfurls its miracle

Of peony and rose

The air is like a stage

Where feathered choirs trill

To He who tunes each season-page

In spite of good and ill

The garden breaks its seal

Where seed, that wondrous thing

Before our very eyes reveals

What only God can bring

We walk beneath a tent

Of white and azure swoon

Goodness and mercy’s filament

Is palpable in June

Its winding afternoon

Kisses our quiet hurt

Where hidden springs embellish June

From fountains born of dirt

Come, taste the giddy song

Of lupine-laden love

Time’s darling does not linger long

In summer’s treasure-trove

© Janet Martin