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Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Breath-stealing Motion-picture





Breath-stealing motion-picture
Back-drops no one can keep
Melting before our wide-eyed gaze
Deep passes over deep

Sketched on a screen of summers
Voices like thinning gold
Fade into back-stage shadows
…another scene unfolds

We watch with dumb-struck hunger
Weep salt-wet smiles of joy
Tasting echoes long emptied of
Its little girl or boy

Riveting, its re-play  
Four-season silver screen
Slips today’s here and now into
A new breath-stealing scene

God, pray we do not blindly breathe
Time; whether old or young
But bless the moments that soon spill
In echoes on our tongue

© Janet Martin

Like Pipe Smoke...





Time reaches into its pockets then flings into the sky
Its leaf, like soldered lockets filled with hello and goodbye
Man grapples with thought-pieces; squints at his enlightenment
While ignorance still reasons with Time’s season-indictment

The clock is like a shepherd where its tick-tock flowers spill
Like sheep into a pasture swiftly stripped of summer-twill
He herds his flock of hours into days, then months and years
Beyond a Gate; futile to wait; Past never re-appears

Yet, ever easy-going Time sprawls on empyrean slope
To watch his newborn offspring spin a tiralee of hope
Where earthlings scramble, he ambles, knowing though we take-take
His pockets never empty and his lockets never break

The pull of seasons never wanes; September shuts her eye
Its lullaby of leaf-song rains and drains the sighing sky
It weeps beneath the wanderer, whimpers where sense beguiles
In echoes of a simpler time; Time tamps his pipe and smiles

© Janet Martin

We Reach




To pick a flower we must reach...


We reach; thought speaks the heart
The heart cups oceans, love
The oceans of Want, wish and need
Breeds our reaching-glove

Morning; it offers More
Where yesterday took flight
We reach twixt After and Before
To drink day’s dying light

Darling, a beggar begs
A dreamer dreams and dreams
A poet dreams and begs, then dregs
The reaches of thought-streams

Will Will and Want subside
Before we close our eyes
Unchained from reach of learn and teach
And life-breath reaching sighs?

Nay, nay, for then pray, pray
What would the dreamer do?
A beggar begs for more than bread
We reach from old to New

…and thereby we grow old
The fount of living red
With mercy; we beseech and reach
God breaks our daily bread

© Janet Martin

God has laid our More on morning’s platter. We reach for more than bread…

I reached to pull back the covers, reached for a light, clothes, cupboard door, coffee mug, the bread for school-lunches…methinks life is a sequence of reaching…



In order to take, we first must reach.
We cannot reach into nothing for,
 ...wherever we reach, God is.

In the Sunday School class I teach we learned about the Fall of Man on Sunday...we talked about what we thought Eden must have been like. Food was free for the taking; a platter of perfection and all Adam and Eve needed was within reach! But they decided, after being deceived that the One Thing they wanted was the thing God told them 'Thou shalt not'. they reached that fateful reach, and ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; perfection was no more. Sin had entered the world through disobedience...as we read the verses where God punishes the Serpent, Adam and Eve,
one student remarked, 'Wow! Eve (or woman) sure got off a lot easier than Adam (or man)
Adam/men have to work and sweat every day but Eve/women just have to do their suffering once in a while...;))


 

Monday, September 29, 2014

Wonder-some






One wide-open highway, one wide-window afternoon and one wide-eyed woman on a bike= happy, happy, happy;-)

We traverse far and wide to see
The artwork in God’s gallery
Of turquoise sea, white sands, green field
Kaleidoscope of autumn-yield

Still, after marveling at blue
Caught on a crown of crimson hue
After russet gusset, gold grain
Pink gossamer of mist-kissed main

…after summer slumbers, her form
Enshrouded in a color-storm
Of vista sweeps and purple deeps
And cradles where her leaf-song sleeps

…after each stunning season-show
The hike-bike-driving-walking 'wow!'
We turn, where evening shadows fall
To home, life’s ‘loveliest of all’

…and here kindly the kettle hums
No matter what ‘next season’ comes
Here we frame pictures hung on thought
Seasons spill soul forget-me-not

…and here, in spite where we’ve been
The heart is tugged by hands unseen
And thus toward its arms we come
That corner we call home-sweet-home

© Janet Martin

Often, as I turn into our driveway whether walking, biking or driving
 I am sudden-struck by Grateful Wonder-some,
 That God saw fit to bless a bit,
 My life with loveliness of Home

...even the horse knows when he is homeward bound!


The Breeze Undresses Trees...



 ...in five days the breeze has almost completely teased the leaf-song from this tree...


The breeze undresses trees
Methinks I hear her laugh
Her whisper sews white-woven clothes
Where grows the silver chaff

The breeze teases the leaves;
Green’s metamorphosis
Of scarlet-gold is hard to hold
Too long upon her kiss

The breeze runs, wild with ease
Baton across the limb
Where strum those mournful melodies
Of summer's dying hymn

The breeze scavenges seas
Of oak, maple and elm
And none can thwart her piracies
Of Hunger at the helm

The breeze, like infantries
Invisible can pull
A battalion of memories
Within her phantom hull

The breeze undresses trees
Shushing plush-red refrains
...soon all that will be left to tease
Are skin and bone remains

© Janet Martin