Back In The Day...

For today’s prompt, Last one, day 30!! can you believe it?!

write a “back in the day” poem. 

You might also call this a “good old days” poem or a “bad old days” poem.

This song rings with scenes from my 'back in the day':)

Through haze of days and willow-treed whisper

Silence plays childhood’s sentimental tune

Eighth notes kerplop, hands grab for the glister

Of apple-shaped gold on a hot afternoon

Summer-kissed darlings all arms, legs and whim

Dash where the hour entwines starry sighs

Drawing with nothing but bud to leaf limb

Dream-blind beginners from youth’s paradise

Mother calls ‘supper’ and we have each other

And don’t even know about loneliness

Five sons, five daughters, father and mother

A ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’ happiness

Want, like a match kindles eyes full of fire

Bellies burn but food cannot satisfy

Life, like a ladder lures each to climb higher

One by one, leaving extra pieces of pie

…and a wide wake of July mornings sparkling

Like glossy cherries on time’s farthest branch

Innocence strewn to the dust in a garden

Planted with echoes where once bare feet danced

© Janet Martin

Of Ether Rembrandts

"H-m-m-m, I wonder what today will look like before its all over", 

I said to Victoria this morning, as I viewed a rather muddled ‘must-do’ list

 When this bush blooms it resurrects echoes from Bygone's rooms...

June 1995

We want for much; while touch of Time leaves laugh-lines on our cheeks

And siphons from thin air, the lair that harbors days and weeks

This grandiose acquaintance with the rise and set of sun

Delivers ether Rembrandts to the place where past is hung

While new day pours Time’s age-old wars from jars of groan and grin

And pens, through its perusal, chronicles beneath our skin

If we have all we need then want is not too much to bear

Though for want’s quiet cause we plead and breathe hope into prayer

That blatant ache of dread, while we break bread beneath blue sky

Demands the valor of a soldier in life’s battle cry

For training grounds of trust are all up-hill, we must proceed

Because we have much more than most if we have all we need

Do not despair; the air that tolls the golden bell of dawn

Is like an invitation to ‘gird up and carry on’

For what has been will be again though not quite like before

And we are always on the verge of Unknown’s Something More

The storehouse that holds future-past unfolds a gap between

Where Now is like a canvas cast to capture rev’ries scene

The heart should burst for love; both blessed and cursed by what it brings

The thorn and bloom of it consumes us with rapture and stings

Its Want is like a child we nurse and try to train and teach

The pros and cons of straining for Something still out of reach

Bravo, dear dreamer, but oh, do not overlook the gift

That drops its pearls then gathers them into dusk’s rose-blue rift

Darling, the death of days and years will never drain dawn’s deep

Its birth of here and now appears with promises to keep

Hello, sweet yellow cello in yon blue orchestral sea

Your sheet music spills puddles of shadow beneath the tree

Where we of wish and wonder walk and talk and ever learn

New truths from age-old lessons taught through laws of no return

© Janet Martin

  

No one can afford to look back too long 

without missing out on today’s moment-song!

Always on the Fringe...

 Autumn grandstands wave wildly while waning hillside Hurrahs

Already winds of change are draining its gaudy applause

From Anne of Ingleside

The aptitude and fortitude and solitude of Past

Is like a landscape after summer’s blooming cape is cast

Aside; the tide of tick and tock, with unrelenting force

Dominates earth and all therein subject to its discourse

…and nothing can evade the Thing that seasons Seasons, oh,

The Past is like an echo-land brindled with letting go

Where we are ever on the fringe of it but never There

Though always moments in our grip slip to its thoroughfare

…while we grapple to learn to love what Present deems our lot

Then twilight takes and tenders to the trove of Afterthought

And we, betrothed it seems, to Becoming, cannot afford

To stand too long and gaze at vistas that once we adored

…or else we miss The Very Thing that waits to splash its ilk

In gray and gold upon the ether Hold of molded silk

Where aptitude and fortitude and solitude of Yore

Is always on the fringe of what we touch and where we are

© Janet Martin

 Here are the thoughts leading up to Anne's summation...

The Vale of All Things Past

Lines below from the narration of the movie How Green Was My Valley

"Everything I ever learned as a small boy came from my father and I never found anything too small or worthless that he told me. What he told me rings in my mind still."

"Someone would strike up a song…and the valley would ring with the sound of many voices for singing is in my people, as sight is in the eye."

"Memory; memory…strange that the mind will forget so much of what only this moment has passed yet holds clear and bright memory of what happened years ago…"

"There was never any talk while we were eating. I never met anybody whose talk was better than good food."

"You've been lucky, Hugh. Lucky to suffer, lucky to spend these weary months in bed, for so God has given you a chance to make a spirit within yourself; and as your Father pleases lamp to have good Light, so keep clean your spirit.
How So?
By prayer, Hugh.And by prayer I don't meaning mumbling or shouting or wallowing like a hog in religious sentiment. Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking.
When you pray, think. Think well what you are saying. Make your thoughts things that are solid and that way your prayer will have strength and that Strength will become part of you, body, mind and spirit."

"Out of the house and across the street as I had run a hundred times before…straight to Mrs. Turrel’s shop for a piece of that toffee you could chew for hours, it seems to me now, and even after it has gone down you could swallow and still find the taste of it hiding behind your tongue. It is with me now so many years later. It makes me think of much that is good and now is gone."

This poem inspired in part by lines from How Green Was My Valley

This vale that oft regales our thought

No fence or bound can know

It flows with blue forget-me-not

And summer's daisy-snow

It admits good and bad alike

And softens with its While

The bitterness of hurt and strife

To echoes with a smile

This vale is filled with days of yore

And even as we breathe

We sense the slipping of the hour

To lands none can bequeath

Beneath Time’s tender touch this vale

Relinquishes the tear

While mankind courts its Awesome Grail

Of faith mingled with fear

For, as each day is lent and spent

It passes through a door

Where none can thwart or circumvent

That which will be no more

Someday we’ll join the paling cast

And slip beyond the Now

Into the Vale of All Things Past

We’ll take our final bow

Then, when we leave this leaf-sheaf strand

To slumber in this vale

Pray we will fold old work-worn hand

As one who labored well

© Janet Martin