Showing posts with label letting go. Show all posts
Showing posts with label letting go. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Love's Purest Harvest

Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12


Thank-you, God, for the toil of rakes,
of pruning shears and petal-tears
and garden tours where farewell aches
with every tug and turn. As years
accumulate with searing ease;
sheaf upon sheaf
of memories


Thank you, God, for beggarly bliss
where happiness and hunger meld
where no morrow can cool the kiss
that weeps with joy at having held
and borne the sting of thorns to smell
the rose before
its petals fell


Thank-you, God, for the tender task
of tending graves; no cruel grief
is this; to linger thus, to bask
in the fullness of fallen leaf
and listen to the eulogy
that weans the whisper
from the tree


Thank-you God, for each little slice
of Heaven on earth’s dust-to-dust
season-altars of sacrifice
-es kindling utter wonder-lust
And humbler gratitude, to crown
Love’s tender teardrops
slipping down

© Janet Martin

A few more 'slices' 
of Heaven on earth’s dust-to-dust...













Saturday, September 30, 2023

So Long, September


This is always a sentimental day of the year...So long, September!
Swept away in a flurry of preparation and preserving!

September- the thick of
Earth's heaven 
of harvest!

So long, September’s misty morn...



Like a postlude, to tune the dark
With ballads slipping like a tear
No lips can kiss away...


Tonight's dessert awaiting a mound of freshly-whipped cream,
before heading to Jim's mom and sister, who are cooking the rest of supper!



So long, sweet sweep of summer spent
Of green-leaf secrets whispered ere
The air grew heavy with the scent
Of farewell’s pungent atmosphere
Ere daylight’s dusky hours fell
Faster beneath gavels deep blue
Where younger hunger tolled a bell
Of inevitable adieu

So long, September’s misty morn
Futile to stoke Past’s embers, oh
Or don a countenance forlorn
Where seasons always come and go
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to greet, a time to part
A time to laugh, a time to weep
And gather harvests for the heart

…fragments of color, peach and plum
Of hummingbird and butterfly
A petal-and-echo-spectrum
From summer full of days gone by
Of dahlia-pom-poms, vermillion
Of fields trembling with cricket lays
Of harvest moon medallion
Dangling above our raptured gaze

Where compositions of so-long
Rouse rhapsodies no pen can spell
Like the teal essence of sea-song
Rolling within, swell after swell
Like a postlude, to tune the dark
With ballads slipping like a tear
No lips can kiss away. Ah, hark!
Is that a falling leaf I hear?

So long, well-trampled garden path
By expeditions to and fro
To heap baskets with aftermath
That always awes and thrills us so
With toil and mercy’s dividends
Praise God from whom all blessing flows
For every break of day that wends
To so-long’s certain curtain-close

So long, purple wild aster art
And amber ambience that gleams
Like fresh-pressed cider, sweet and tart
To tease eager taste-buds with dreams
That, in spite of what time may take
It kindly, generously grants
Un-stoppered wonderment to wake
A time to sing, a time to dance

So long, so long, September-love
Of fading flower-serenade
Of clinging to a thinning glove
We wear on earth, but heaven-made
Of places we never quite found
And some we did, and never sought
So long, so long, September, crowned
With apple-red and golden rod

© Janet Martin






Friday, September 22, 2023

Wonder-dust or Swansong or September...



It had to be...a heart-and-soul Swansong!
Happy, happy, happy, happy
Last Day of Summer 2023


Your light that splays like amber glaze and bathes the earth in mellow mist...


Your wind-tossed bars where aster-stars twinkle like shattered amethyst...


Your lanes that wind, goldenrod lined, to lure us from the beaten track...



Your paradise for butterflies...


...and tousled wild-bloom bric-a-brac


Your pendulum of pear and plum drip-dripping from our lips and chins...


your brisker air that starts to wear the shriek of jay...


and honk of geese...


Your kitchen heat, pungent and sweet with basil, garlic, pickling spice
Your garden dish that makes me wish somehow, we could live each meal twice...





Your humble toil of mercy's spoil like contrails of an upward spark...
(a photo so we remember how tall the sweet corn grew this year!!!!)



Your orchard stroll that thrills the soul with apple-dappled dreams come true...




Your light that splays like amber glaze and bathes the earth in mellow mist
Your wind-tossed bars where aster-stars twinkle like shattered amethyst
Your garnet splash of mountain ash berries against backdrops of blue
Your orchard stroll that thrills the soul with apple-dappled dreams come true

Your heady blur of lavender, of marigold and cricket lays
Your subtle change as you estrange vistas of younger, summer days
Your pendulum of pear and plum drip-dripping from our lips and chins
A glockenspiel that starts to peal with farewell's reel as fall begins  

Your lanes that wind, goldenrod lined, to lure us from the beaten track
Your paradise for butterflies, and tousled wild bloom bric-a-brac
Your hugs that war with tugs that roar with Bygone’s foregone victory
Your tango of longing and love, where mulled breeze strums the yellow tree

Your brisker air begins to wear the shriek of jay and honk of geese
And in our hearts a hunger starts to prepare us for your release
And the so-long, as your swansong suffuses morning, noon and night
Relinquishment sublimely rent with tender grief and sheer delight 

Your kitchen heat, pungent and sweet with basil, garlic, pickling spice
Your garden dish that makes me wish somehow, we could live each meal twice
Your humble toil of mercy's spoil like contrails of an upward spark
Your melodies that waft and tease a world tucked beneath early dark

Your tangerine and gold and green as gourds are heaped in bright array
Your crisp hello where dawn’s tableau gleams like a silver serving tray
Your rains that spill from hill to hill, your chill that kindles wanderlust
Your pleasure of so-much-to-love before you turn to wonder-dust

September, you run wonder through us like shafts of sunlight through leaves 
You rush the skin that we are in with joys gathered like harvest sheaves 
While we begin to sense the thinning, winning ways of days of yore
You wake in us an ache because of so much to be thankful for 


© Janet Martin

Your tangerine and gold and green as gourds are heaped in bright array...

Your crisp hello where dawn’s tableau gleams like a silver serving tray...

Your rains that spill from hill to hill, your chill that kindles wanderlust...

Your pleasure of so-much-to-love before you turn to wonder-dust...



Yesterday's 'canning-first'-plum sauce! SO yummy