Soft The Soulful Toll of Harvest...

A few glimpses of inspiration for this poem...

 

Soft the soulful toll of harvest sweeps the golden country-side

Gathers summer’s lisping darlings into farewell’s fulsome tide

Gaze is filled with praise and hunger; nothing stays the same for long

Sifting childhood from its youngster with each lusty leap and song

Earthy tables groan with mercy; we are humbled hulls of need

Knowing how beyond our doing is the surge that stirs the seed

Now the urge of nature’s calling sweetens farmer’s sweat and toil

Where the culling and the hauling is like laughter from the soil

Time’s Supreme Design of seasons chimes in lilies of the field

Climbs through fences where the drifter smiles, mesmerized by its yield

Turn the other cheek my sweetheart, brush those salty stars away

We have this one thing in common; none can dodge the death of day

Ah, the Architect of summer formed autumn and winter too

Authored it with the same goodness as sweet August’s dust and dew

Soft the soulful toll of summer rolls across stubble-cleft dunes

Siphons from silence a ballad laden with lost afternoons

© Janet Martin

Of Seeds Softly Falling

  PAD Challenge day 29: For today’s prompt, write a what nobody knows poem. 

These seeds we sow

We’ll never know

How far or full the reaping

So, pray that we

Sow carefully

Where yon harvest is sleeping

Though it appears

It may be years

Before its full-fledged calling

Tomorrow yields

Where today’s fields

Hold now-seeds softly falling

© Janet Martin

 'Very much of our future life will depend upon our earliest days', said preacher Charles Spurgeon on January 15, 1893, then quoted Mr. Ruskins, not quite verbatim, ' people often say we excuse the thoughtlessness of youth, but he says no, it never ought to be excused. I'd far rather hear of thoughtless old age when a man has done his work, but what excuse can be found for a thoughtless youth? The time for thought is at the beginning of life and there is no period which so much demands or so much necessitates thoughtfulness as our early days...I would that all young men would think so.They say that they must sow their wild oats. No! No, my dear young friend. think before you sow such seed as that what the reaping will be. See if there is not better corn to be found than wild oats and sow that, then think how you will sow it and when you will sow it for if you do not think about the sowing, what will the harvest be? '

Tomorrow's Fields...

It is always planting season...

and harvest.

PAD invites us to write a 'things-not-as-it-appears' poem

It is hard to prepare for

What we cannot see

Tomorrow is always

A Mystery

No one can tell us

What its furrow shields

Yet, Today we are planting

Tomorrow’s Fields 

Tomorrow's Fields

With its myst'ry will bear

The offspring of

What we planted there

© Janet Martin

The Sweeping Sweep of Years

The sweeping sweep of years will yield

The seeds we’re planting in its field

Though hidden deep, still it will grow

This is the way of seeds, you know

And though the hour disappears

Lost in the sweeping sweep of years

When first we dropped it underfoot

Eventually it will bear fruit

Someday will spill the telling yield

Of seeds we’re planting in its field

The sweeping sweep of years will prove

At harvest-time the God we love

Planter and reaper both are we

A weed can never be a tree

Consider well these minute spheres

Lost to the sweeping sweep of years

© Janet Martin

 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Gal.6:7

Joy-harvest...

To harvest joy we must employ

Not tools of iron, steel or wood

But firmly wield in every field

A humble heart of gratitude

To harvest joy giddy like boy

With puppy or wee girl with dream

We must aspire in meek desire

To regard ‘small’ with high esteem

To harvest joy; mystic alloy

Of standing strong and bowing low

We must entrust our begging dust

To One True God who loves us so

To harvest joy is not to cloy

Vain expectation’s bloated yen

But to embrace God’s gift of grace

In breath-by-breath betrothed ‘amen’

Ultimate joy is no decoy

Of painted plastic, stone or wood

It is the thrill of  broken will

Filling a heart of gratitude

© Janet Martin

Harvest Time

Look up; look up, the Master pleas

A gleaming harvest waits

Oh, who will garner in the sheaves

Before it is too late

Go forth; go forth, His urgent charge

Reverberates in love

As He beholds the threshing-floor

In courtyards up above

Behold, behold the whitened yield

A precious, priceless span

Oh, who will labor in the field

To gather while he can?

Look up; look up, the Master pleas

There is so much to do

The harvest bends with ripened wheat

But laborers are few

© Janet Martin