Showing posts with label Nostalgic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nostalgic. Show all posts

Monday, March 4, 2024

Ode to Father Time

Dear Father Time...

I never tire of your ways...

Your sweet and sun-steeped golden days...(today, a balmy 20C)



Your contours, swaddled in soft grays...


Your landscapes, washed in pink...



A quick pit-stop for supper and off again)



Spring is like a dog straining wildly at its leash today!

I never tire of your ways
Your sweet and sun-steeped golden days
Your contours, swaddled in soft grays
Your landscapes, washed in pink
Your rough-and-tumble give and take
Your waves that sob and surge and break
Across shorelines that gleam and ache
With untamed poem-ink

I never tire of your hymn
It trembles in the barren limb
And throbs as buds begin to brim
With orchestras of green
With daybreak’s lilac-tinted sighs
And twilight’s gentle lullabies
With hellos, harboring goodbyes
With all that falls between

I never tire of your waltz
Your minuet and somersaults
Your promenade that never halts
But twirls me round and round
Till I am breathless with delight
Yet never tire of the sight
Of you, gilt-edged ‘gainst gath’ring night
Of a new day unbound

I never tire of your ease
Turning moments to memories
Taming my younger-hungered pleas
With humble thankfulness
My cheek against your stubbly chin
Ah, darling, how can I begin
To count your ways I cannot win
Yet love you nonetheless

© Janet Martin




Thursday, February 8, 2024

Fond Yonder-World of 'Soon'


Yesterday afternoon on our south-facing deck in a cozy crook of sunshine
 I wiggled my toes (and blew my nose, due to sudden head cold) 
profoundly taken by an immense Sense of Impending Soon!

Celestial rivers meandered overhead...




Perhaps, due in part because
it's been a less-than-normal snowy winter so far,
stoking thoughts with bucolic scenes of 'Soon'







In a fond, yonder-world of ‘Soon’
Unravels summer’s afternoon
Uncurls a river, silver-bent
Unfurls earth’s mirth of winter spent
Unwinds a lane, wildflower-fringed
Beyond a gaping gate unhinged
Leading through lilac hedge and tress
To front row seats to happiness
To loiter where daffodils sway
To climb the young, green hills of May
To leap like lambs, with joy because
The world rings/sings with Winter That Was

...where pockets jingle, full of June
In a fond, yonder-world of ‘soon’
Where brooks chuckle, content to glide
Without hype, through the countryside
To welcome we who once were wishin’
For yellow dusk, perfect for fishin’
For zephyr-soft caress to brush
Our pallid cheek with sun-kissed flush
And to be humbled by a prize
Of bursting buds beneath blue skies
And to be sweetly glad because
Twilight is later than it was

…where the fond, yonder-world of ‘Soon’
That cheered a dull, chill afternoon
Has rent the veil that held at bay
Laughter of barefoot child at play
And countless little pleasantries
Bidding us take an hour’s ease
To revel ‘neath the influence
Of bloom-imbibed exuberance
Enchanted by a brimming world
Of nature’s orchestras unfurled
In melodies and colours of
A Composer whose name is Love

…who stirs in us a yearning croon
For a fond, yonder-world of ‘Soon’
Where pastures green and waters still
Unmarred by grief and pain will spill
Where farewell’s tear will never dim
The eye, no solemn parting hymn
Will sever ties that briefly bound
Us to a time, four-season-crowned
With here and there a glimpse for we
Who dream of how Heaven will be
Then faith does not lose heart because
Soon this will be the world that was

© Janet Martin

With here and there a glimpse for we
Who dream of how Heaven will be...


Heaven-

Rev.21:4
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. 
There will be no more death 
or mourning 
or crying 
or pain,
 for the old order of things 
has passed away.”






Friday, December 15, 2023

Because a Person Could Get Lost...

 


The older we grow the swifter years fly!!


This poem began to niggle yesterday evening, on a sunset walk, alone
on a lane that over the years has seen many a youngster racing ahead of me...





A person could get lost while wandering backward through the years
While tracing moments embossed on a tide of smiles and tears
Where seasons slipped through fingers of sunrise and shadow-fall
Till, commonplace we realize, is not common at all

Duty and beauty interlace, weaving life’s aftermath
A person could get lost while grieving bygone’s joy-worn path
Where if we are not wary, we could miss the moment gold
That no miser can bury and no wishful thinking hold

Rather than ruminate about a world that is no more
This day the Lord has made is rolling west from eastward shore
And just as surely as the rest it will slip out of reach
So then, I want to try my best to learn what it would teach

…because a person could get lost in fond futility
While wand’ring backward through a world of glossed imagery
Better to focus on Today, because it is a gift
That all too surely slips away to yester-worlds adrift

© Janet Martin


a few 'wandering backward' shots...















Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Moment-sum Momentum or Pleasure of Enough


I linger intentionally these days;
days that time flies through!


'oops! Sorry gramma!'


He kissed Baby Jesus and said 'nap' and put Him back to His mommy😘😍


...suddenly the momentum of moment-sums soft-rouse
A kinship with November’s sparser sweeps...


 and barren boughs...


I linger more; I cannot bear to hurry you because
You slip through hearts and fingers like autumn’s dying applause
Of wind-strummed leaf and harvest’s remnant sheaf, frost-brittle where
Not long ago you frolicked on spring meadows, green and fair

…and trembled in bud-bowers full of flowers to unfold
You tickled us with hours while turning the new year old
You leaped from fallow furrows, clothed earth in a gleaming gown
Before we sheared each field like sheep, and begged of you, ‘slow down

Sometimes we mourn the way you steal the seasons you beget
Yet in your age-old ways you heal the very wounds you let
With rise and fall and ebb and flow of morn to eventide
You tame once hurried footsteps; bid us to regard each stride

and so I linger more, while you run fearless fingers through
The tatters of a sigh, an autumn sky deep, denim-blue
Where suddenly the momentum of moment-sums soft-rouse
A kinship with November’s sparser sweeps and barren boughs

Dear Father Time, each season awes us with so much to love
And so I slow my pace to taste The Pleasure of Enough
And linger more to look and feel and learn what you would teach 
Before moment-momentum melds to reels beyond my reach

© Janet Martin

You leaped from fallow furrows, clothed earth in a gleaming gown
Before we sheared each field like sheep, and begged of you, ‘slow down’...


Our neighbor's dog is our dog too esp. when it comes to treats!
 He knows if he waits long enough
Mrs. Janet will, without fail, find a treat for him😅😂💓
and he is always eager to give me a big, wet, smelly farm-dog kiss of appreciation
(if I let him😝)














Thursday, November 16, 2023

Like Nature's Rendition of The Last Post

 





Something about the early dark of November kindles nostalgia...




Sometimes, like an old song a bygone era reappears
To replay on a phantom stage fond scenes of yesteryears
To coax back into being what will never be again
Save in a book of memories we open now and then

If only to remind ourselves not to get lost too long
In the bittersweet ballad of an intangible song
Wafting upon the starkness of an Autumn eventide
After leaf-notes have fluttered from the treetops where they sighed

...all summer long, like a love song we took for granted till
Whispers were winnowed one by one and everything was still
Save a gripping rendition of the Last Post being played
For fallen leaves; and moments and the melodies they made

© Janet Martin

 


Monday, November 6, 2023

How Is It (that as Time goes by I do not come apart?)

Catch a Falling Star...


PAD Challenge. day 4: For today’s prompt, write a catching poem.

This is one of those poems that threatened to go into full gallop
unless I reined it in...

They get caught on last, little leaves still clinging to tree-limbs
And on dusk’s fading fringes, as eventide’s tableau dims
And on the corner of the street each time you board the bus
As love’s tether learns to weather the Apartness of Us

They snag on echo-wisps and on November’s brooding gray
And on a phantom frame filled with pictures of Yesterday
A tender memory of suppertime for at least six
Before I was acquainted with Time’s age-old bag of tricks

They catch on freckled noses and on orchards, doffed of fruit
And on the wind that moans outside the door, like a bold brute
And on the close-cropped counterpane of harvest gathered in
On the moon as it pins the sky with lopsided half-grin

They tangle in the awkward angles of a child, half-grown
And catch on flakes of first snowfall, on milkweed silk, wind-blown
And on the notes of vintage melodies at Christmas time
And on the big clock tower at the hour’s solemn chime

On gardens as they slumber after pummeling of feet
After summer-sweet laughter begets ballads, bittersweet
After Autumn has yielded to the order of the earth
After the spoil of toil displays the fruit of labor’s worth

…on four-season masterpieces delighting ardent gaze
On wonder’s unpredictable and unexpected ways
On commonplace, second-to-none familiarity
On silhouettes etched on sunsets, on Baby on my knee

On petals as the prime of bloom is siphoned from the stem
On the slow-but-sure weaning of youth’s teen-green diadem
On so much more than page can hold, or poetry can tell
On gladness of hello and on the sadness of farewell

How is it that as time goes by, I do not come apart
As often as life’s catches at the strings around my heart

© Janet Martin

A tender memory of suppertime for at least six
Before I was acquainted with Time’s age-old bag of tricks...




Saturday, November 4, 2023

Or, So It Seemed to the Dreamer...

 PAD Challenge, day 2: For today’s prompt, write a childhood object poem. 


up and away

undefined 

by time and place

brushing perimeters of space

or so it seemed 

to the dreamer, 

then

with honey-colored braids

and an insatiable

 yen

that turned out to be

the cocoon that cradled

 Poetry...


On that rope swing

 she would try

to touch the sky

...the monotony of

an endless July 

afternoon

no match for the butterfly

inside the

 cocoon...


Janet~

Thursday, November 2, 2023

Sheer Veneer





Is the haste of a season sometimes almost more than you can bear too?

Tonight we lingered, sipping rich, black espresso in the crisp, gold dusk...




Time’s fabric is so sheer
Like mist-embellished gauze
That gathers up laughter and tears
Into the year that was

How easily it slips
Through fingertips and sighs
Like poetry of eyes and lips
Of hellos and goodbyes

Futile to linger where
The daylight disappears
Beneath a shawl of dark blue air
Un-weathered by the years

How swiftly seasons waft
Like silver thistledown
Above the quiet woodland doffed
Of spring-to-autumn’s crown

We reach but cannot trace
The thread that weaves the year
As season-stitches interlace
Time’s fabric remains sheer

Let's savor its sheer bliss
With love's sheer appetite 
And let the sheer wonder of This
Fill us with sheer delight

© Janet Martin