Today is Like a Little Bridge

OctPoWriMo day 14: What is on the bridge between yesterday and tomorrow?

Today is like a little bridge

That spans the gap between

The misted vale of morrow

And what has already been

Beneath this little bridge that spans

What was to what will be

Abide the everlasting hands

Of God, for you and me

What was will not return again

And who knows what will be?

Today bridges the gap twixt Past

And opportunity

Yesterday and tomorrow are

Time’s after and before

Today is like a bridge between

Each far and phantom shore

Today spans from regret to hope
The scaffold of God's grace
Bridges the gap to what remains
From what none can erase

 

© Janet Martin

Risk Failure...a Blitz Poem

OctPoWriMo Day 13. Write a blitz poem about risk.

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” 
― T.S. Eliot

How far will I go?

How much will I risk?

Risk nothing?

Risk it all?

All of what?

All of my heart

Heart full of hunger

Heart full of words

Words that bare all

Words that spell thought

Thought is a drifter

Thought controls minds

Minds move the hand

Minds birth action

Action involves plan

Action desires risk

Risk requires courage

Risk inspires fear

Fear is a killer

Fear is a thief

Thief of laughter

Thief of beauty

Beauty of love

Beauty of ink

Ink drained from souls

Ink shaped in poetry

Poetry to lavish paper

Poetry to surprise people

People feel it

People need it

It is soul food

It is music

Music for all ages

Music on pages

Pages that thrill

Pages that fill

Fill us with hunger

Fill us with joy

Joy of what is

Joy of what waits

Waits to be written

Waits to be shared

Shared. There it is

Shared requires risk

Risk being wrong

Risk being read by masters

Masters that braved risk

Masters that bore failure

Risk

Failure

© Janet Martin

Autumn ABC's

 OctPoWriMo day 12

Applause of leaf is brief, my darling

Bric-a-brac of seasons spill

Causing balladeers to ponder

Death and life and time’s quadrille

Everything is ‘but a season’

Flowers flourish, fade and fall

God, the Keeper of earth’s garden

Heaps the deep with seeded hull

Intimate, nature’s undoing

Jars joy-sorrow intertwined

Keening Consciousness pursuing

Love-loss-longing’s heart-soul-mind

Mulled moments meld gold to crimson

Naked nods the ravished bloom

Opulence transposed; each petal

Plays a swansong on spring’s womb

Quiet quickens clapping coppice

Russet rivers rush beneath

Shadows draining summer’s waning

Tress upon tempest-tossed heath

Umber skeletal umbrellas

Vex wind-minstrels; poetry

Washes worlds, once full of leaf-song

Xylophone-like gong sets free

Yellow, garnet, bronze-keyed skylines

Zephyrs strum their melody

© Janet Martin

Come to the Sea

 OctPoWriMo day 9 prompt: Today I'm suggesting you think about the elements, how they affect you and about the duality and contrast in them.

We always come back; something ‘bout the roar

-ing sea draws us, metallic green-blue-gray

Though its ebb-rolling tug-of-shore-to-shore

Cannot return Past or wash it away

How pleasant is its sun and sandy fringe

That stays the deep; we come to dream and sigh

Out to the line where heaven is a hinge

Touching horizon holding up the sky

The sea steals and seals; still, it gives us more

Constant the lure toward its song, wild, free

As if it were an old-time troubadour

And we the lucky listeners at its knee

Come to the sea; leave all your cares behind

For cares can wait until another day

Come, listen to it glisten, silver-lined

Atonement washes worry far way

© Janet Martin

Pale Pink

OctPoWriMo day 8; Today's Challenge, Write a poem talking about a color and your memories attached to it. Bring us along for the memory's journey.

Your fingers 

kept getting caught

In soft pink shell-stitch

As you introduced

Your new-born mother

To a whole new, soft-pink world

Of love

Your mother,

A stranger to this world

Of pink booties and bassinets

Of little pink fingers and toes

Was about to discover

How this whole new world of love

Was also a whole new world 

Of sorrow

© Janet Martin