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Friday, May 24, 2024

How Oft-Soft a Sense of Joy-filled Grief...

...or, is it grief-filled joy?? 


(below, a week ago)



"If the tulips never died
the season for irises and peonies,
columbine and corn flowers,
 would never be born"
was my consolation during
 this morning's flower-garden stroll...










How oft/soft the haste of moments stirs
A bittersweet-ness as it blurs
The very present with the past
Ephemeral, yet iron-cast

How oft a long-awaited day
Of balmy breeze and sunbeam-play
Unfolds its bloom upon a stem
That cannot keep its diadem

…where soon echoes and petals meld
To grace the place where death is held
While overhead life thunders by
Beneath a rising, falling sky

How oft delight is caught off-guard
Where children dash across the yard
Heedless of currents that commence
To bear them from sweet innocence

…where soon they humble love's reply
With gaze that meets gaze, eye to eye
And we begin to revere more
The Hand that draws ajar dawn’s door

And we begin to slow our pace
To drain each precious drop of grace
From breakers as they heave and swell 
To wash dusk's shorelines with farewell

How oft we run with outstretched arms
But cannot hold for long, life’s charms
As love, ever a student, gapes
With groping awe, at spent landscapes

How oft we, like our silenced kin
When in the prime of groan and grin
Begin to sense a glove-like sky  
Taming/claiming an ocean of reply 

How oft then, time's momentum wakes
A bittersweet climax that breaks
Like foaming tides across a shore
Where lust for love and life implore

© Janet Martin




Eccles.3: 1-2
To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:
 A time [a]to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;...






2 comments:

  1. Oftentimes I can't decide which I like better, your poems or your photos. I usually call it a draw, but then it occurred to me what I like best: your heart behind them both. I miss children dashing across the yard. I have only my 16 yo at home, and am cherishing his last "growing up" years, but am looking forward to any grandbabies the future may hold--and watching and playing with them out in the yard!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello Jen, I just came in from a heavenly evening with my grandchildren, watching them run through the garden (and growing up SO fast already! ) Your comments are always so kind and generous<3 thank-you. I wish for you a future full of grand-babies. I have one at home as well. (23) and very busy with work and social life so I say I kind of have one at home :-0 Here's to the joy we choose for the season we are in!

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I hope you enjoyed your pause on this porch and thank-you for your visit!