Showing posts with label November. Show all posts
Showing posts with label November. Show all posts

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

 


Wednesday, November 8, 2023

November Is The Poet's Bliss...

The poet's bliss is November...


Sentimental hues arouse...


Warmth from autumn’s waning embers...


Wafting from nigh-barren boughs...


Where the brittle corn rows shimmer
Weighed with final harvest-boon...


Where the revived pastures glimmer
Green as green as middle-June...


Where the heavy heavens splinter
With inklings of snowflake song...



Where the emptiness of gardens...
Lines canning shelves, row on row...



The poet's bliss is November
Sentimental hues arouse
Warmth from autumn’s waning embers
Wafting from nigh-barren boughs
Where the brittle corn rows shimmer
Weighed with final harvest-boon
Where the revived pastures glimmer
Green as green as middle-June
Where the heavy heavens splinter
With inklings of snowflake song
And the kiss of Old Man Winter
Starts to flirt with old and young
Where the emptiness of gardens
Lines canning shelves, row on row
And the chores that summer pardons
Are tackled with gusto now
The poet’s bliss is November
Something in its brooding bent
Fills the poet with the splendor
Of a heart, humbly content

© Janet Martin

The poet’s bliss is November
Something in its brooding bent
Fills the poet with the splendor
Of a heart, humbly content...









Psalm 69:30

I will praise God’s name in song

and exalt Him with thanksgiving.







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...




Better Be Careful, Poet...


PAD Challenge day 6: For today’s prompt, take the phrase "Better (blank),"
replace the blank with a new word or phrase,
make the new phrase the title of your poem,
and then, write your poem...


Because of the rain and the end to Daylight Saving Time,
darkness began to fall at 5:00 p.m.!




Dusk’s darkness drops an ethereal veil over the countryside
The night rolls in, an ocean driv’n by an invisible tide
You better be careful, Poet; November can cast a spell
And set beneath its brooding deep, a bottomless inkwell

The day dissolves, a little like a snowflake on Time’s tongue
It covers every window where November’s landscape hung
You better be careful, Poet; for the heart is easy prey
When standing on dusk’s shoreline watching daylight ebb away

© Janet Martin



Saturday, November 4, 2023

November-Frames

Stark silhouettes etched on backdrops of hasting dusk and tardy dawn...


 Joy-grief relief of gardens shucked, and turned and tucked beneath the sky...
(next year my make-shift grape-arbor needs a serious upgrade!!)😅



Still, stubbled sweeps of harvests reaped and gathered into bins and barns...


The morning-tide, a soundless sea that bathes the still-life lea with bronze...




Stark silhouettes etched on backdrops of hasting dusk and tardy dawn
Joy-grief relief of gardens shucked, and turned and tucked beneath the sky
The heart, a little like a cart by steads of fondest farewells drawn
The wind, a brisk custodian that whisks the brittle leaves awry

Still, stubbled sweeps of harvests reaped and gathered into bins and barns
The morning-tide, a soundless sea that bathes the still-life lea with bronze
The sudden, sweet tweet-tweet greeting as long-gone feathered friends return
The brooding tent of heavens bent with imminence of frosty fronds

The gaping gate where wonders wait to stun our gaze with grays and browns
Before the first soft snowflakes waft earthward from welkin worlds above
The beauty of spartan landscapes, of nature’s threadbare capes and gowns
Duty’s breath-stealing tasks, as thankfulness basks in God’s love

Brigadoon of November Noon, funereal fallow-hallowed hush
Fruit and root cellar shelves and floors festooned with toil and mercy’s toll
A heart-string unpreparedly snared on a crab-apple-dappled bush
The swing, bereft of barefoot child, a Masterpiece of Childhood’s Soul

Happiness dons kerchiefs and caps; laughter sounds small in fall’s ballroom
Each breath emits a puff of cloud, a bit like engines of a train
In ruddy cheeks and noses November’s kissable roses bloom
As leaves are raked and piled, and the child in each of us wakes again

Twilight’s twinkling front porch lights cheer work-weary streams of traffic home
Luxury is a cup of tea, a good book nook, and knitted shawl
And life is like the savoring of surprise flavours in a poem
Because November sometimes seems to be The Fairest of Them All

© Janet Martin


As we raked and heaped pile after pile of leaves at my parent's place
, we three children of yesterday (my brother, his wife and me)
 couldn't resist a a flying leap and romp because
something about leaf-piles wakes the child in us all.

A heart-string unpreparedly snared on a crab-apple-dappled bush...






Wednesday, November 30, 2022

To Dear November, a Fond Farewell


Another blip aka November slips through our fingers...
fading into a wild flurry of white tonight...


To purple shadows planted on dusk’s barren, burnished path
To sudden snow globe afternoons rekindling Christmas thrill
To fall and winter’s duels in the muted aftermath
Of leaf song winnowed from woodlands now dark and stark and still

To gleaming furrows turned and tucked like umber counterpanes
To harvest-hymn hiatus and to skies that steal the show
To echo-tangos tugging at heartstrings taut/fraught with refrains
Of love, laughter and longing’s ever learning to let go

To winds that wander through a world of golden tapers snuffed
To squash and pumpkin lanterns gleaned and baked and steamed and fried
To brooding tableaus transformed by a big white duvet, fluffed
Until it spills soft feathers over town and countryside

To joy, because of juncos, to the blue jays’ raucous cries
To winter’s feathered friends returned like long lost family
To reveling in the raw agony of time’s demise
To making the most of what all too soon is history

To dear November’s dying embers on a dimming grate
To nature’s somber sweetness after autumn’s robe is rent
I pen this poem as I linger at a phantom gate
To bid a fond farewell and wonder where, oh, where you went

(Ah yes, to hugs and kisses, too many to count, I know
To happiness because it was enough to be alive
To thankfulness to God from whom each season’s blessings flow
Through outstretched touch and taste and such, into Bygone’s archive)

© Janet Martin

And some precious last-day-of-November memories...




...and the world that had returned to green, gray and brown 
after Old Man Winter's mid November bumble, 
when he tumbled out of bed too soon,
will be a white winter wonderland come December!

Good-night and see you in December💖🙏