Sense-ations

The roof-tops touch the sky

The sky grazes the street

And in each snowflake skimming by

I sense the dance of feet

The pine-tree minstrel plays

Soft, spectral violins

And in the serenade it splays

I sense a song of grins

Winter’s rowdy rogues brawl

On plush and pulsing seams

Where, even in the thickest squall

I sense the rush of streams

This tantrum none can quell

Or tame the tempest's will

Yet on the wild and frigid fell

I sense a daffodil

White, rolls the countryside

White tolls most ev’rything

Still, even in this white-world wide

I sense the green of spring

© Janet Martin

There Will Be Buttercups (a February Fantasyland)

For your February dreaming pleasure!

There will be buttercups

Brimming with draughts of dew

There will be wild grass sighing

Where the dying day runs through

The silky, milky scarves of mist

Will drape dawn’s countryside

Where white daisy medallions strew

Green meadows far and wide

Silver highlights will brush the lush

Thigh-high cornfields with sun

And hills will tug at hearts to rest

And restless feet to run

The garden, fast asleep for now

Will waken wanderlust

To sting the dreamer’s eyes and brow

With tears of sweat and dust

Where fellowship with flowers is

Fine payoff for the pain

Of hours in the blazing heat

To beat weeds at their game

Zephyr-vespers will waft aloft

Soft on the eventide

The afternoon will offer seats

Of grass and moss, creek-side

There will be cricket-song

And Queen Ann's Lace-fringed lanes

And buttercups that brim, my dear

With warm, dust-fragrant rains

A hundred shades of green

Will break upon the earth

Where soon winter will melt into

Spring’s fountain of rebirth

© Janet Martin

Poem-Schooner

This February morn let’s stroll the countryside, my sweet

Where dandelions laugh like bobbing sunbeams at our feet

Dawn rolls across yon shoreline in a tide of blush and gold

Let’s sit on morning’s front-row seat to watch time’s bloom unfold

Let’s step beyond the shiver-sheen of shoveled walks and such

The velveteen of spring’s first green is easy to the touch

And we are not as far-off as we were from flowered clime

Where poem is a schooner we can board without a dime

…and if we please, we’ll sail the turquoise seas of mid-July

Or afternoon of em’rald June spread beneath sapphire sky

Let’s lure from winter’s white on white an arbor, rose-entwined

A bare-foot rendezvous through meadow lanes wild blue-strife lined

This February morn is like a schooner summer-bound

Then hop on board and praise the Lord for gardens underground

Where nothing stays the same for long above an undertow

That soon strips Old Man Winter’s song of words like ‘cold’ and ‘snow’

© Janet Martin

I'm not rushing winter, but every once in a while its nice to 

climb aboard a poem-ship and sail to warmer scenes

...every once in a while its nice to be reminded

under winter-cold white waits summer-warm greens! 

Instead of boots, flip-flops, 

instead of parkas,

parks filled with laughter of children 

going up, up, up to the blue sky in a swing!

For Mr. February

 February days ebbed and flowed between sun-rain-snow

His coat is ragged burlap and his cap is thatch, gray-gold

He lumbers over hinterland and hill; a vagabond

From pockets feather-flowers fall and blue shadows unfold

Where brusque against dusk’s pastel west the fir tree waves its wand

He never shows his face, and he seems older than his days

A lonely sort of fellow, no fanfare to hail his storm

He scuffles by where summer-dreamers sigh for turquoise bays

While stark against infringing dark the pine tree flaunts its form 

He musters brooding blusters, quick-tempered, misunderstood 

He broadens daylight's dome and gleans a hip-hooray or two

Then scatters silver mirrors and flatters the frosted wood 

His sky stays pinker longer when the day is almost through

‘Dear forlorn Mr. February, wherefore wilt thou go

And who waitest to meet thee as thou fadest from the land?’

Methinks I hear a tear but it is tossed and lost in snow

Where cold against the eventide the frigid poplars stand

© Janet Martin

Worth The Wait...

The hem of heaven’s dressing-gown pools golden on the snow

Above the blurring, slurring scowl of winter’s undertow

The sting of wind-raw kisses comes to vex the ruddy cheek

Where churlish gusts of sleet-dust whirl and swirl across the street

The feet that pine for sun-sweet dirt and garden paths to stroll

Must plead the warmth of thermal socks and boots; mittens console

The hands hungry to plant and prune and press beneath the sod

The seeds that cup bloom-miracles and providence of God

The gale that wails through orchard ghost-towns soon will slink away

And trees that shiver in the cold be clad with fragrant fray

The marsh where mistrals, harsh and hard-fisted torment its berth

Wait to be tickled once again by zephyr-gentle mirth

The sky swallows the sun before its warmth can reach our toes

But dreamers are not thwarted by the rogue that bully-blows

And throws a cloth of ice-snow ‘cross dawn’s wide-eyed wakening

We know in time that Time will intercede and bring us spring

© Janet Martin

Guess what I’m doing today; planning my garden! 

Yes, I said planning NOT planting;-)

  Each winter I say, ‘this spring I’m going to plant a pretty garden with lots of flowers’, then planting time comes and practicality prevails…I need every inch of it for food, it seems. Oh well, for now I have fun designing winding garden paths hedged in by flowers, bird-baths and bird-houses, here and there a ‘siesta-spot’ for dreamers to stop and watch the bees, taste the breeze and know this was all worth the wait!

 Perhaps I can try to come up with a plan that integrates both whimsy and cabbages into a practical, profitable garden, Lord willing strength, health and enough sun and rain, of course!

Brenda writes of ‘a reprieve from the cold today’…the only reprieves we’ve had this winter are the ones we create in-doors!

And Sarah has come up with a design for ‘the super-gardener’! I think maybe that’s what we gardeners will look like in heaven as we putter around in those heavenly pastures:-o

Oh no!! I just remembered something…The Beast (aka as my garden-tiller) balked last 

August and would NOT cooperate again even though I changed spark-plugs and oil, leaving me with a weed-infested garden by October. I think I better start dreaming tiller-bills;-( before I can dream of this...(as I was looking through last summer's photos I realized that sometimes 'siesta-spots' happen because not everything grows that we planted, so we allow the volunteer sun-flowers to stay, then set a bench there for the dreamer...)