Awesome Gallery

With all the work and worry of this hurry-hurry place

We sometimes miss the whisper-soft kisses of daily grace

The world is like a wonderland of grand and common gifts

Waiting to be unwrapped by eyes and fumbling fingertips

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ cites the phrase

Then pray that we learn to behold with eyes-wide-open gaze

The colors of the world unfurl Masterpiece works of heart

To soothe strict toil and duty with the beauty of God’s art

The earth and the fullness thereof open its gates; no charge

To all, as we witness firsthand Originals At Large

Of leaf etched on a canvas that we cannot touch with hands

Of raindrop-dappled dances on four-season-fold grandstands

Love lavishes Time’s bittersweet with startling commonness

It scatters beneath hurried feet the miracle of ‘yes’

Where work and worry of this hurry-hurry place runs through

An awesome gallery of artwork, free to me and you

© Janet Martin

Wishing you a day of Awesome in unexpected places!

A Rare Undertaking

Today's Final Prompt: Write a last chance poem.

(This poem may be read as one or as six poem-lets)

Within the grin and growl of Time…of tumbles and slow-dances

We skin its scope of grief and hope and first and final chances

The air is rife with life’s delights and knife-like circumstances

The morning like a rose unfolds in blue and gold romances

Though we are old-er than we were and not so bold and daring

The firsts and lasts of love and life still overflow our bearing

Life’s firsts are often named, earmarked and widely celebrated

Its lasts intangible; heart-tugs, subtle and understated

What if today was the last day that we would share our laughter

What, through farewell’s tears would we say to cheer us ever after?

Each day is a first-final dance; what a rare undertaking

As feet move to the music of memories-in-the-making

© Janet Martin

(Thoughts and prayers with those in Tennessee and surrounding areas 

as they deal with wild-fire and other tornado aftermath.

One survivor worded it perfectly

'We can rebuild but we cannot replace'. )

Slow Dance With November Blue

For today’s prompt, we’re once again doing two-for-Tuesday prompt. So pick one, combine both prompts into one poem, or write two (or more) different poems. Here are the prompts:

• Write a love poem. A poem about love, people who are in love, attempting to woo, or some other lovely spin on the subject. Or…
• Write an anti-love poem. I know that for every lover there’s an equally powerful hater.

I love you; how you woo me with your blue November eyes

You stoke the hunger in my soul with leafless lullabies

There is no other lover quite as intimate as you

The wander-land of summer swept into November blue

I’ll miss you; for you kiss the countryside with mottled hues

Your painter’s tray is mostly gray and bronze and browns and blues

With here and there a sudden splash of hallelujah-green

To tease earth’s waning colors with echoes of seventeen

I love you; poet’s soulmate and maestro of early dusk

Your baton slips across the tips of stripped trees, blue and brusque

The song you play a melody of passion’s aftermath

A brittle leaf tap-dances on your frozen garden path

I love how gray becomes you on a rainy afternoon
No, you were never made for flowered frocks of May and June
But for lands after harvest and hands folded into prayer
For slow dancers that do not feel the need to rush somewhere

November blue, I’ll miss you; love's farewell is pleasure's pain

You weave such tender sweetness to your ‘til-we-meet-again’

The touch of you, slow, solemn; like somehow you’ll miss me too

Oh, troubadour of autumn, fare thee well and I love you

© Janet Martin

A Little More Love

For today’s prompt, we’re once again doing two-for-Tuesday prompt. So pick one, combine both prompts into one poem, or write two (or more) different poems. Here are the prompts:

• Write a love poem. A poem about love, people who are in love, attempting to woo, or some other lovely spin on the subject. Or…
• Write an anti-love poem. I know that for every lover there’s an equally powerful hater.

We are all broken... promises and self-serving ruses

And hearts full of cunning and stuttered excuses

We all need love; not the hug and run kind

But love that won’t hold us then leave us behind

We’re all mistaken, misunderstood misters and misses

We all need try-try- again’s cuddles and kisses

Why don’t we try, you and I, ‘ere Time softly shuts its door

To strive to love one another just a little bit more

We all need love; the heart without, is a hungry pauper

We all need someone with which to share our care and laughter

What a pity that we can’t seem to find a way to prove

What would happen if we all gave just a little more love

© Janet Martin

Like an Art-show

  

The backdrop of 

life's day-to-day

Is a slideshow; 

Blush-blue-gold-gray

...that slips away

Hello,adieu

The sky a tray

Of untamed hue 

Where we look up

Paint-brush in hand

To dapple art

Upon time's sand

Beneath bowers

Of tinted air

We paint flowers

On winter's chair

 Janet Martin

Where Not All Poems Spill In Ink...

 Today's page is rain-thrummed gray...

but we may still spill songs to it

Happy second-last day of November!

The blue that drew the day away

And snuffed window-scapes ‘neath its tide

Grows pale; the grail that pours today

Refurbishes the countryside

Where we, wide-eyed artists, attend

Its poetry as yet, unpenned

Today is like a page that waits

To wear what madrigals we spill

Before dusk’s lowering of gates

Obliterates the moor and hill

When by the fireside we sit

To read poems as yet, un-writ

How vague seems unshaped poetry  

We dip into a sea of thought

Where what we think no one can see

Becomes the sum of actions wrought

And what we surmised was not much

Is immortalized by our touch

We are all authors of a kind

No one is insignificant

The poetry we leave behind

Is like a self-signed testament

Where not all poems spill in ink

Yet spell far more than we may think

© Janet Martin