Showing posts with label back-to-school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label back-to-school. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

The Lane Is Quiet Now...

Seeing all the precious first-day-of-school photos
tugs at the strings of mom-hearts at the other end of school-days spectrum
Pinch Me!! Where did that seemingly-endless season slip?!
The lane is quiet now...



The lane is quiet now
No mother’s prayers flung aft
Her precious troop of scholars
No frantic antics, wept-laughed

The lane is quiet now
Save echoes, bittersweet
No toast and jam dashed after one
Who had no time to eat

No new-shoes-backpack joy
Or belly-butterflies
Or darling little girl and boy
Tugging at mom’s heart-ties

No watching that old clock
Dwindle the minutes till
‘Hurry, hurry!! You’ll miss the bus!’
Repeats its frenzied drill

That once-upon-a-time
Forever-long somehow
Unraveled into mist-kissed clime
The lane is quiet now

© Janet Martin

That once-upon-a-time
Forever-long somehow
Unraveled into mist-kissed clime
The lane is quiet now...

(the last first-day-of-school exactly 6 years ago now!)


The lane is quiet now
save cricket tweet-tweet-tweet...



Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Agile Acrobat


Today begins a new school year in Canada, 
and though the calendar says its still summer
for a few more weeks, 
summer always feels officially over when school begins!
My prayers are for lots of tots and parents this morning 
as many weather tides of
fears and tears 
of letting go etc...

Sometimes I pinch myself
at how once upon a time 
The Summer of Life seemed to stretch
endlessly ahead!
Now I turn to see its 'eternity'
 as nothing more than a splash of sun-sparkles
on a sea-swept shore...



Time winks and whisks another summer into memory books
As sentimental mothers gaze with fond and lingering looks
At days that sweetly, swiftly swept through outstretched hearts and hands
To join their predecessors kept in bygone’s far-flung lands

Time winks and weeps where wonder thunders beneath our skin
No wish or want can keep at bay the future closing in
Where all the while new day beguiles with new moments released
Like quilt patches in Bygone’s counterpane, each one is pieced

Time winks and weeps and flies and tries to fit us with new shoes
That life insists upon and no one is ready to choose
(How in the whirl of little boys and girls did I become
A strange, yet splitting image of a version of ‘me mum’) (my mom)

Time winks and weeps and flies and leaps, an agile acrobat
That balances on heartstrings and bows as he tips his hat
While we gather our bearings with a trembling chin held high
Bracing Ourselves for love’s next round of hello and good-bye

…while oceanic tempests surge and crash on shores unseen
While we gaze in amazement at where summer’s isle had been
While time winks, weeps, and flies and leaps across echo-glossed bars
While we brush summer from our cheeks in a blur of salt-stars

© Janet Martin


Grand-sonny- 1st day of SK!💖






Tuesday, September 5, 2017

September-ish

Wow, it feels September-ish, Victoria and I agreed 
as we waited for her bus on the first back-to-school quite-coolish morning!



Morning is hushed, plush port of mist
The sedums blush, like school girls kissed
And old, new sweaters feel de-lish
In weather so September-ish

From doorways mothers wipe their tears
Where summer’s ‘hurray’ disappears
As back-to-school worlds fill Time’s dish
And hearts with art, September-ish

Noon tolls yon big old, golden bell
While vibrato of crickets swell
Where fell and field splay mellow-ish
With fronds, bronzed and September-ish

Bold blooms in muted mantle bow
Surrendered to Time's When and How
 Futile to become rebel-ish
Summer succumbs September-ish

Jars gleam with streams of garnered grace
Daydreamers linger long to trace
The place of boughs still bent with wish
And fruit, sweet and September-ish

Cornrows, like green-clad infantry
March stalk-still across hill and lea  
As woolly clouds droop, splash-a-splish
On worlds unfurled, September-ish

© Janet Martin
 


Monday, September 4, 2017

Of Unmined Splendor...

It's the last day before back-to-school in Canada. 
Social media is filled with pics of first-year college and university students setting up their away-from-home homes for the first time while mother's/parents learn just how far heart-strings can stretch and not break! hugs all around:)
As moms/parents(I can only speak as a mom), we tend to be reluctant to learn lessons we must
Because the answers to these lessons are in a book entitled 'Trust'



Oh my, that part of us that none but God can fully know
Braves the fine art of holding while the ache of reach lets go
How soft and swift the common sift of moment-mites estrange
Where nothing stays the same for long yet some things never change

We feel our faces for a smile though eyes betray the heart
No shrewd collusion can beguile the While that clocks impart
Where each of us is at the mercy of day’s rise and set
And none of us can sway the course that force of it begets

We teach and are taught by what seems like quotidian dues
While caught up in a tide of toys, noise, crumbs and running shoes
Then, once upon a slamming door and quest for peace so kind
The story of a little house leaves child’s carouse behind

No flower lasts forever, no delight keeps its first thrill
No hour has an appetite that moments can quite fill
Where on the doorstep of a season we hail its veneer
Before we turn to watch the tail-ends of Then disappear

Darling, I didn’t know, though, oh, They told us it was so
How quick the tick and tock of clocks melds Now to a slideshow
Where pictures play on a projector held in tender sighs
While we return to till the place where unmined splendor lies

© Janet Martin



Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Dear Teacher...



 All over Canada, yellow buses dot back-to-school town and countryside...

What a high vocation
Of inestimable reach
A room full of children
And you, there to teach

Dear teacher, be careful
With each mind you mold
For children learn far more
Than just what they’re told

Each child, like a flower
Cradled in bud-loom
Where you hold the power
To probe it to bloom

Dear teacher, be gracious
With your teacher-looks
For they read your faces
Sometimes better than books

Dear teacher, we thank you
For helping them learn
Though you seldom witness
Your labor’s return

…in this high vocation
Of inestimable reach
A room full of children
And you, there to teach

© Janet Martin

Let's pray for our teachers diligently
as they meet new children and new challenges
of a new school-year!

My heart goes out to teachers...
esp. new ones unprepared for child/crowd-control issues that
really cut into quality teaching-time! 

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Trying to Make Peace With The Ways of Time and A Blessing For the New School Year





...and just like that; another summer in the books! 

The fast-forward of summer days are spilled
Like sunbeams on a leaf they glance then flit
Into that far-off place where time is stilled
While hearts make room to wear the ache of it

Daunting Unknown waits behind ev’ry door
We are not brave, save by the grace of God
For He alone can hear the heart implore
While all the while seasons fall prey to sod

We make peace with the hand of change and then
Before we scarce have learned its foreign drill
The hand of change changes its ways again
To jar the heart and vex our human will

And we would be intimidated, oft
By the relentlessness of tick and tock
As it deceives with kisses hunger-soft
Then leaves its laughter on the leaf-strewn walk

The brunt of years startles us with good-byes
Its August afternoon, castles of sand
Caught in the quick of summer-skies and sighs
As waves erase its traces from Time’s hand

Loss would be our lonely boast, but oh
Upon the bittersweet of Bygone’s isle
A fresh-faced cast of memories ebb-flow
To tease the face of time into a smile

© Janet Martin



The bus came early, before any of us were expecting it so the first back-to-school-morning had no time for sentimentality or voiced first-day-of-grade-nine-anxiety-attacks. I heard Matt giving Victoria some do and don’t advice just before the frantic ‘oh no! the bus!!’ scene…so, needless to say, no pictures; except one I couldn't resist of the neighbors across the road waiting for their bus on this rainy morning.


A Blessing For the New School Year



Lord, bless and keep them as they go
Hold them within Your care
Let laughter make their faces glow
As You instill our prayer

And let their way be blessed with friends
Help them be a friend too
For past mistakes, Lord, make amends
And help them start brand-new

Be with each teacher; make words wise
And kind and valuable
To these so young, their ears and eyes
So impressionable

Give them minds of discernment, Lord
As they learn what they can
Then, bless with happiness, each child
And young woman and man

© Janet Martin