To Feel The Brunt of August's Kiss...

 How does one choose a few from a thousand frames filled with August fondness...

This sudden cloudy, cool spurt does something to the summer soul... 🍂🍂🍂

Besides August inspiration, today's poem is also a piece of my heart

as I watch our grandchildren, our neighbour's children,

 children that were once 'my childcare-children' etc....

 FLYING through sweet, fleet childhood!

Always a sense of letting go

Begins to tug, as August wanes

And pours a mellow, yellow glow

Through twilight’s leaf-and-petal-panes

While cricket-choirs serenade

The summer soul with stilted tune

And vistas gleam with earth’s aubade

Of misty morn, and hazy noon

…where wave on wave, we brave the slope

Held by the hands of August’s clock

That swirls hues in a kaleidoscope

Of zinnia, cosmos, hollyhock

Of larkspur, dahlia, hibiscus,

Of hills ablaze with goldenrod

While a strange sense of loss sweeps us

Though harvest heaps our hearts with laud

…as field and garden overflows

With Faith’s seed-rendered aftermath

And bare feet play arpeggios

Along the trampled garden-path

And heartstrings snag where beauty bares

Its soul but cannot drain its fount

And nothing in the world compares

With uncurbed blessings beyond count

…of menu-choices freshly-shucked

Or gathered in baskets and bowls

As day-by-day August is tucked

Beneath a blanket without holes

Thus, we cannot afford to waste

The essence of ‘remember when’

The timbre of have-and-hold’s haste

A cosmic crux/flux of Now to Then

Always a sense of ‘bittersweet’

Rushes the raw edge of delight

As earth and hints of Heaven meet

In touch and taste, sound, smell and sight

And script of ink, though it may fill

Fond phantom frames with picture-bliss

Cannot quite capture standing still

To feel the brunt of August’s kiss

To feel the brunt of August’s kiss

Is not for the faint of desire

The holy awareness of This

Can set the course of Yet on fire

With awe, where past and future meet

For one split-second, ere they part

 To Bygone's aeon, bittersweet

Like August's kiss etched in the heart

Benediction...

Dear Lord, make me kindly content

Where Augusts flicker as they fly

Through worlds of childhoods 

swiftly spent

To disappear 

in 

years 

gone by

And help me 

recognize anew

Momentous treasure running rife

In moment-measure pouring through

The hourglass of love and life  

Janet Martin

Happy 32nd Birthday, Melissa!

Dear Lord, make me kindly content

Where Augusts flicker as they fly...

Masterpiece of Memories

Time's moment-ous Tempo 

is composing a Masterpiece;

the piece we call Memories, 

The Piece returned to the Master when 

our gift called life is through.

This Piece is precious because

it is the part for which we give account!

Each day's  'Memories' are piece of a priceless Masterpiece...

This poem 'happened' in part as I stood on my tippy-toes the other night

to hug 'my little boys', from bygone days;

 the older brothers just turned 20 & 17!

And 'little' brother is graduating from Grade 8!! 

Time composes a kind of hymn

With moments, as they glance and glim

Like notes in an arpeggio

Of highest high and lowest low

And as life's lyrics lilt and weep

As season-measures soar and sweep 

They draw from intangible keys

A Masterpiece called Memories

Time gathers in its rushing streams

The ebb and flowing throb of dreams

Where hope's immortal blossom spars

With petal-snow and falling stars

To spark a sentimental show

Of holding close and letting go

A ballad of spent harmonies;

This Masterpiece of Memories

Behold the beauty of today

Hark! where nuances wait to play

Ah, feel the reel as rhythms roll 

From touch and taste to heart and soul

A holy toll that tunes a hymn

As laughter and tears glance and glim

As burden and blessing increase

Mortal's Memory-Masterpiece

Life is a gift; each melody

Part of a Greater Harmony

Of precision and dissonance

Of decision and recompense

Of petals settled where they fall

Of 'nothing new' Original

And ungraspable as a breeze

Life's Masterpiece of Memories

Before today melts in the breach

Of moments slipping beyond reach

Before its melodies are set

In Bygone's changeless pirouette 

Let's do our kind and humble part

To make Today a Work of Art

Before God wills Time's Tempo stilled

Of life's memories, Master-willed

Janet Martin

Ps.92:12

So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

The Time We Had/Have (Dear Lucy)

Whenever we reach the 17th of a month my heart does a little jolt!

This day Jan. 17, 2026, marks 16 mos, since we lost dear Lucy💔.

The longevity of this reality is beginning to sink in!

This winter I am meandering through John Greenleaf Whittier's 

Snow Bound

A Winter Idyll

These stanzas struck a specially tender chord as round the fireside they recall

stories and memories from departed loved ones...

Some things will never change

We cannot turn back Time

Or reach its walls to rearrange

The pictures in its clime

Time cannot give back days

Or one moment when spent

The clock will never change its ways

Through laughter or lament 

To trust the Giver of 

Time's lease, as it unfolds

Helps us to make the most of love 

No matter what it holds

For love is worth the price

The heart is bound to pay

Grief is the sacred/solemn sacrifice

Love cannot hold at bay

Each tear a testament

And tender tribute to

The Time We Had to Paint Its Tent

Of air with 'I love you' 

For love, when life is through

Does not fade like a flow'r

The grave, though it must claim its due

Is Time's dust-and-ash bow'r

And though the heart may tear

And though the eye may brim

God, rich in mercy helps us bear

Love's grief for her or him

...until each loss we brave

Will deck departure's sod 

Time's inheritance is the grave

Love's inheritance, God 

The Time We Have To Spend

Is precious, but a glove/knife

The Giver of its lease, my friend

Is Everlasting Love/Life 

The clang of 'my' and 'me' 

Soon flies like worthless chaff

Only true love transcends Time's spree

God seals its autograph 

The Tree that spawns the limbs

Where leaf sojourn is brief/runs rife 

Offers comfort that never dims

As long as there is grief/life

Janet Martin

1 Cor.13:12

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:

Do you know the One who purchased, holds and anchors

the hope of Heaven/God?

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.”

Bittersweet Ballad

Ps.19:14

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, 

be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.

Christmas season stirs reflection.

As I reflect on another year where sorrow and joy

 clashed, again and again, the word 'bittersweet'

seems to have taken a deeper, more sacred root in the soil

of hope, 

trust...

 and gratitude!

Before it is too late to say 

'I love you' by our words and deeds

Let's take a fresh look at today

And make the most of moment-seeds...

Moment-seeds may appear as commonplace

as shoveling snow

or loads of laundry,

but as we take a closer look at the

'who' and the 'why' of them

they steal our breath!!

With changes that each year unfolds

Where birth and death's charges compete

Love and longing's uncharted holds

Compose a ballad, bittersweet

Between a world of yesterdays

And morrows, life's moments untwist

In sunshine golds and storm cloud grays

Years melt away like morning mist

 

...while making us more humble stewards

Of  Today's gardens-vineyards-fields 

To gather love's grains, grapes and gourds

With gratitude for what soon yields

...to scenes of once-upon-today

The heart, a gallery that gleams

With buds that bloom and fall away

Like petal-fray on rushing streams

...pushed by relentless winds of change

Where hold and letting go compete

In tangos of embrace-estrange 

To time's bold ballad, bittersweet

Before it is too late to say 

'I love you' by our words and deeds

Let's take a fresh look at today

And make the most of moment-seeds 

...so when the bud unfolds to bloom

Upon the tomb of yesteryears

The bitter-sweetness of its plume

Will stir a hymn of smiles and tears 

Janet Martin 

Wonderful Merciful Savior- Selah 

Sweet Summer's Courtship Came and Went...

Not the sun or the summer alone,

but every hour yields its tribute of delight.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

Sweet summer's courtship came....

 and went...

Sweet summer's courtship came and went

Weaving its laughter and lament

Into a wreath of season-spent

To crown footfalls that fade

Like flower gardens, fair and brief

Like bowers bent with fruit and leaf

Like hours full of joy and grief

Like shadowland's soft-splayed 

...where childhood's barefoot, carefree strand

Soon falls prey to the firm command 

Of waves that sweep the sea and sand

 In morn to eventide

Whilst gath'ring in the gleaming wake

Of eager passion's give and take

Framed rations, tamed into an ache

  Of snow-capped countryside 

The aftermath of youthfulness

Is resolute in its progress 

Where winter is the effervesce 

Of summer's sanguine splash

Of petal-mettle, fondly kissed

Then felled by time's determined fist

Beneath a scarf of sequined mist

And echo's knee-deep sash

Janet Martin

Where winter is the effervesce 

Of summer's sanguine splash...

...and because it's tradition with the first real snowfall every year,

this song! 🙏

Fall Softly Snow...

Along Life's Way

Somewhere along life's way the truth

gathers up innocence, then youth

falls easy prey to changeless ways

no one can thwart or trick or faze

Naivety, once stupid bliss

is wizened by Time's surly kiss

through lessons, futile to refute.

Life's teacher is a patient brute

...chasing seasons through hasting years

while doling out laughter and tears

 in ways not unlike days of yore

as truth takes us on its grand tour 

of Herculean leaps and bounds

while its fearless finesse confounds

answers once slick and full of prose

cut to the quick by knockout blows/no's  

 

where everybody is fair game

and no one can exemption claim

when it comes to proving the truth

that starts with Innocence, then youth

With subtle ease the seasons turn

no one too young or old to learn

to love, to hope in God, to pray

And bless someone along life's way

Janet Martin