A Medley of Happiness Guarantees or Love's Happy-Sad Reality

Today's prompt for poem-a-day from Robert Lee Brewer @Writer's Digest:

For today's prompt, we have our first two-for-Tuesday prompt, 

which means you get two prompts. 

You can write to one of the prompts, both the prompts separately,

 or try to write a poem that works with both prompts at the same time. 

The prompts are:

Write a happy poem, and/or...

Write a sad poem.

Some sunny happiness-anticipation mementos today...

While the wind howls, wild as an untrained child!

Happiness Guaranteed

As long as there are boys with joys like fishing, baseball, pups

And girls with pretty curls, and brook-banks strewn with buttercups

And warm handshakes and birthday cakes and laughter, old and young

And spring following winter, and arbors wisteria-hung/strung/flung

And fortunes found in friendships crowned with loyalty and prayer

And skies of blue and work to do and poems still to snare/share

And birds to sing as the morning dissolves the heavens, dark

And simple things like trees with swings, like picnics in the park

Like beauty to behold and shelter from the cold, bold gale

Like hope secure for the soul moored in Love that will not fail

Or, like fresh bread or coffee or berries, sun-warm and sweet

Or gardens, where gladness runs wild as a child in bare feet

As long as two agree and ‘will you marry me’ hears ‘yes’

And babies coo and wonders woo, there will be happiness

As long as you and I try to be kinder every day

And live to bless, then happiness will never lose its way

© Janet Martin

Irreparable Alloy 

In greatest happiness and sadness, love is always chief

The flipside of love's gladness is, inevitably, grief 

The higher love's apex of joy the deeper sorrow's trove

Irreparable alloy; the bitter-sweetest price of love

True love is like a treasure no imposter can attain

A finely mingled measure of profound pleasure and pain

Not for the faint of heart is love's vexatious certainty 

The twain can never part; love's happy-sad reality 

© Janet Martin

Inexorable Irony 

The only way we know for sure that happiness exists

Is because of the sadness that this broken world untwists 

How dumb would be delight's caress, how numb, the rousing cheer

Without sadness to sweeten happiness with bitter tear 

© Janet Martin

Without determined dedication

Without valiant effort

Victory is flavorless

***

Wilt thou be happy, oh,

  so happy thou couldst burst?  

Well, then,

Forget about thyself; 

and love God first

then fellowmen

© Janet Martin

It's nice to be appreciated and loved

And we all know

That its important, once in a while

To tell each other so!

***

Wishing one and all a happy day!

Yea, happy is that people, 

whose God is the LORD.

Psalm 144:15 KJV

Like Music Notes (In a Brand, New Love Song)

Happy April!

My, how a month doth fly!!

April is the month of the poem-a-day challenge!

 From Robert Brewer at Writer's Digest...here is today's prompt.

"It's time for the first day of the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge! Each day, I'll provide a poetry prompt and a poem to get things started. You can secretly poem along at home, or you can share your poem in the comments below.

For today's prompt, write an optimistic poem. I find the beginnings of things to be a time of great optimism. Whether it's the beginning of a sporting season or a month (or even a week), there's so much opportunity available. But optimism can exist anywhere and at any time; so don't limit your optimism to the beginnings of things."

Today we embark on

a new day, a new week and a new month!

All great new reasons to embrace optimism!

Behind us lies the dust and ash of seasons spilled and spent

Unfurling in its aftermath a bittersweet tableau

Of what may sometimes seem like a cosmic experiment

Of love, learning how to hold on while learning to let go

Like an unblemished phoenix today gleams, a priceless stone

In hands where we, fumbling proprietors of precious time

Proceed, through daybreak's gaping door, vessels of skin and bone

And Soul, shouldering grin and groan as on and up we climb 

I love the loveliness of a new day, like a clean sweep

Like a fresh page, rather than yesterday's returned 'so-long'  

I love the way the ending as we drifted off to sleep

Evolves into the Intro of a whole new worship song

Behind us lies the old; the dust and ash of ages set 

Before us gleams the new; like treasure from an unplumbed trove 

Beneath us streams a fresh measure of moments never met 

Like music notes composing brand-new hymns of hope and love 

 

Janet Martin

Psalm 100 is a glorious way to refresh optimism with

unfaltering truth from the Word of God

A perfect wat to start a new

day-week-month!

Make a joyful noise to the LORD,

all the earth.

2Serve the LORD with gladness;

come into His presence with joyful songs.

3Know that the LORD is God.

It is He who made us, and we are His;a

we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.

4Enter His gates with thanksgiving

and His courts with praise;

give thanks to Him and bless His name.

5For the LORD is good,

and His loving devotion endures forever;

His faithfulness continues to all generations.

Forever God Is Faithful

Collections of Bit By Bit

PAD Challenge-day 7:

Two-for-Tuesday prompt. 

Write to one prompt, both prompts, 

and/or combine them: 

Write a big poem, or...

Write a small poem.

Life roads/loads can seem impossible/impassable when viewed in a lump sum...

Sometimes, as a loved one bears a cross, 

 oh, how we wish we could

bear or ease it for them but we cannot, and should not! 

(sometimes we wish we could rid ourselves of our own crosses!)

 Only beneath life's crosses

does faith become stronger and humbler/meeker💗🙏

But we can and should pray for God's sufficient grace 

to be the strength in our weakness!!

2 Cor.12:9

And He said to me,

 “My grace is sufficient for you, 

for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

Life roads/loads can seem impossible/impassable when viewed in a lump sum

Its weight of cares can topple the most hopeful optimist

For none can see what waits to be, what is ‘what-ifs’ outcome

What favor or calamity the hour may untwist

What detour must be taken or what leap of learning tried

What perseverance shaken or what darling wish denied

But one breath, one step, one moment and one prayer at a time

The feeble can scale mountains and great burdens can be borne

Courage can face the giant where faith’s steppingstones align

To make us more reliant on the Author of each morn

As we press on toward the place where troubles cease their cry

As step by step and grace by grace He whispers ‘here am I’

A small word of kindness begins ripple effects of cheer

Tis step by step, the victor wins the title victors claim

Moment by moment unravels seasons, marked year by year

And draws each road we travel back to He, from whence we came

Do not despair, the Whole of It, when analyzed will show

Life's collections of bit by bit, as by God’s grace we go

© Janet Martin

In the Sweet By and By

John 1:16

And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.

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

(Love's) Better Poetry

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.

This take on today's poem-prompt 

was inspired by yesterday's photo-session;

the aim being to get a few good ones

(aka everyone looking forward with eyes open!!) 

for a page in a family calendar for my parents for Christmas

You are the laugh-lines that I earn

And collect thankfully

As by the grace of God I learn

Love's Better Poetry

You overflow my cup of joy

Filling love's crooks and curves

With happiness, dear girl and boy

More than one heart deserves 

You are my gentlest lullaby

My tenderest of care

And each, the apple of my eye

And each, my humblest prayer

You are heaven-to-earth's caress 

You are my home-sweet-home

You are more holy thankfulness

Than pen can ever poem

© Janet Martin

Getting to the Root of the Problem...

 PAD Challenge day 3: For today’s prompt, write a problem poem. 

Below an excerpt from Peter Marshall's sermon-

Keeper of the Springs

(and this was in the 1940's!!)

One cannot fix a problem until one pinpoints the source

But one ought to note symptoms that should trouble you and I

For epidemic-proportion-populace on a course

Of Ignorance to Truth, where empty churches testify

A somber lack of reverence and interest and care

For the Great Certainty for which we all ought to prepare

...and so tis no small wonder that things go from bad to worse

 In laws of twisted logic of confusion gone berserk

Where right is wrong and wrong is right and God, a name they curse

And well-intended master-plans of Fix-it just don't work

In a world doomed to madness as they seek but cannot find

Hope's everlasting gladness that yields joy and peace of mind 

When truth is seen as lies and lies are heralded as truth

It is because the Word of God is trodden underfoot

Then darkened understanding errs and bears pitiful proof;

Denial of the problem that yields problematic fruit

And gross incomprehension of the sad state we are in;

Because they/we do not recognize the root problem of sin 

The problem is not war or poverty, but hate and greed

A proud and unrepentant heart, thinking, utterly flawed

A negligent apathy to sin's subtle, deadly seed

In seeking first this world rather than the kingdom of God

Where empty churches gape and children/people traipse toward a Goal

Ignorant of Love's problem-solving Saviour of the Soul 

Sad problem this; too many homes where God's Word has no place

And homes where the Bible is but a book upon a shelf

Ignoring that apart from God, there is no saving grace

Apart from the Vine the branch is a Dead Thing by itself

Revealing that the culprit in this problem's quandary

Until we surrender to God, is always you and me 

© Janet Martin

Rom.1:16-17

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, 

because it is the power of God 

that brings salvation to everyone who believes: 

first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 

17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—

a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,[e] 

just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”[f]

So many do not know

or believe or care

about the day of redemption 

and reckoning drawing near...

Malachi 4:1-3

The Day of the LORD

(Zephaniah 1:7–18; 1 Thessalonians 5:1–11; 2 Peter 3:8–13)

1“For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, 

when all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble;

 the day is coming when I will set them ablaze,”

 says the LORD of Hosts.

 “Not a root or branch will be left to them.”

2“But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness 

will rise with healing in its wings,a 

and you will go out and leap like calves from the stall.

  3Then you will trample the wicked, f

or they will be ashes under the soles of your feet 

on the day I am preparing,” 

says the LORD of Hosts.

Better Reason

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.

Better critique better, Reason's Sleek Begetter

So eager to charm and entice

Desire's effulgence with instant indulgence

Better to first ponder the price

And weigh velvet voices that prey on quick choices

And trick us to trade truth for lies

Better, first to measure the worth of the treasure

And cost of the pleasure we prize

Because oft desire can be a soft liar

If we heed no Higher Decree

Than gratification of infatuation's

Accommodating fantasy

Better to look better where seduction's fetter

Is not always easy to spot

Better to fight battles before Fool's Proof tattles

On Reason's Begetter of Thought

To weigh the approach of a 'promise'-drawn coach

Where knights in shining armor plead

To study the path and the long aftermath

(of) Where Yielding to Impulse may lead...

...better to pray before we leap

Into the fray of Whim

Better to ask the Lord to keep

Thought's pleasure stayed on Him 

© Janet Martin

Today's devotion...

...from this book!

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~

Celebration-Declaration or Celebration of Life

 PAD Challenge day 1: For today’s prompt, write a declaration poem. 

(I clicked on the Writer's Digest Chapbook Challenge every morning

but simply could not carve out the freedom to join...

Trying a few of the challenges here this morning!

BTW, everyone is welcome to join in the poeming fun

 at Writer's Digest poem-a-day challenge all through November!)

Yesterday morning a friend dropped by with some

homemade soup she made with some kale I had given her

the week before!

Such a sweet surprise seemed perfect for sharing so

I packed up an impromptu picnic lunch and visited my mother-in-law!

I told her our lunch was a group-effort/blessing...

Pears from my sister Lucy, soup from my friend Elaine

and Apple Bread baked by my daughter Victoria!

We had a most precious afternoon so

completely unplanned!

So today I call a celebration-declaration

for all un-expectation waiting to turn to joy!

I call a celebration-declaration for Today

A kind determination of joy-expectation when

We purpose to be kinder, and humbly thankful; to pray

And thank God for the mercy's that He renews once again

To thank Him for blessings that we too oft under-esteem 

Loved ones within arms reach; those never out of reach of prayer

To praise Him for His goodness no matter how bad things seem

To know that He is able, as we cast on Him our care 

To look a little closer at what we call Commonplace

And then to realize it is not common after all

But rather, celebration-worthy measures of God's grace

Each task a sacred mission as we heed love's creature-call 

...and suddenly sweet wonder steals our breath with gratitude

For favors humbly noted, that we overlooked before

A celebration-declaration for Regard renewed

As we reply with prayer, especially for countries at war

 💔😢🙏

Janet Martin~

I also received a very special love-created thank-you card from Elaine...

Let's make today our thank-you card to God!

Like Spring Chamber Music With A Twist

PAD Challenge day 14: 

For today's prompt, we're going to try something a little different

 in that I want you to write an "And Now for Something Completely Different" poem. 

This prompt is inspired by the Monty Python skits that would suddenly shift gears, 

but your poem doesn't have to be humorous. 

It should aspire to be somehow different than what you've written so far this month.

We laugh at robin antics...

Like an invitation to spring’s festival, the sun

Unfolds the earth at daybreak, beckoning to everyone...

Like an invitation to spring’s festival, the sun

Unfolds the earth at daybreak, beckoning to everyone

To rise and shine like little lights of love into a world

To slow swift pace and pause where nature’s vendors are unfurled

Like gentle chamber music, and admission is free

A festival of bars and phrases primed for poetry

Where no one is elbowing neighbors for a better view

(Although we wouldn’t mind, on this fine day, a nudge or two)

Because we are honored to be part of this happiness

While wandering through April’s festival of friendliness

We laugh at robin antics as they sing, a merry troop

And praise this perfect…what the heck?!!!

Aw! I just stepped in dog poop!!!

© Janet Martin

April Quadrille

 PAD Challenge-day 13-For today's prompt, write a forgive poem. 

Green murmur on the meadow...

First timid tufts of flora...

Green murmur on the meadow

 New nest tucked in the brush

And on the verge of birth, a surge

Of calm before the rush

A bud pulsing with promise

A garden, primed with dreams

A zephyr. soft, blue sky aloft

Earth, bursting at its seams

Marmalade-misted morning

Sweet, sun-kissed afternoon

Silhouette-show of dusk’s tableau

‘neath tusk of opaque moon

First timid tufts of flora

Nature’s most modest plumes

Presents its charms to open arms

And eyes, thirsty for blooms

The ground, like Berber carpet

Where tender bare feet dance

Earth’s spartan sweep cannot long keep

Its pristine countenance

April arouses laughter

Wakes joy akin to Heav’n

A robin’s trill, a daffodil

And winter is forgiv’n

© Janet Martin

Happily Ever After

PAD Challenge day 11-

Write a form poem, and/or...

Write an anti-form poem.

Anyone who knows me well knows I love

the traditional style of form.

However, I do admire those who serve anti-form well!

Sometimes I am so happy

And sometimes oh, so sad

For all the fulfilled wishes

That I never had

Sometimes when I am waiting

For Wish, not granted yet

I retrace Intervention 

 That spared me from regret

Then, when my school of wishes

Swims past my dangling hook

Like sassy, flashy fishes,

I pretend not to look

Happily ever after

I've learned, I'm learning how to prize

The wealth in lilts of laughter

The stars in loved one's eyes

 

Janet Martin