Up And At 'Em... Giddyup

 Above lines from the poem Reveille by A.E. Housman

Once in a while I come across a poem that makes me utterly swoon...

This is such a poem!

I can't believe how often the morning-poem I sip with my coffee ties in with present-life! 

Matt started trade-school this week. One of the guys he car-pools with lives on a dairy-farm and he told me this guy chores before they leave at 7:00 a.m. Another of his class-mates works at our neighbor's dairy farm and yesterday he worked an 8 hour day/night at the farm after his school day...

I love a 'lad' who jumps up, not afraid of hard work! 

The last verse of the above poem, words to live by for all of us!

These fields don't look like this because someone stayed in bed...

 “A little sleep, a little slumber,
            A little folding of the hands to rest,”

      Then your poverty will come as a robber
            And your want like an armed man.

Prov.24:33-34

I've kiddingly said more than once sometimes it feels
like the hardest part of my day is going from horizontal to vertical...
as soon as I'm up you couldn't pay me to go back to bed, 

but WOW! while still snuggled there it feels SO good😴

Up and at ‘em, touch them toes down

Pry the lid from life at large

In the belly burns a fire

In the fingertips a forge

Look, oh lyricist of laugh-lines

Time enough is hasting by

Where the orb of early morning

Drinks the darkness from the sky

…where the pink ink of permission

Spills a Holy Signature

From the Author of creation

To the hero and the cur

Sack soon siphoned of its music

Bag of borrowed bric-a-brac

Saddles both beggar and chooser

On time’s one-way no back-track

Days are not a dime a dozen

Time is not a fortune free

Mornings are a gift from heaven

Offered without guarantee

Listen, can you hear the crashes

Where Time’s surf rolls gray-gold-blue

'ere this turf of dust and ashes

Soon collects its ordained due

© Janet Martin