Ode for Summer's Poets

 

Where meals are gathered from a garden-green charcuterie

Oh my, but fresh-picked goodness garners five stars, hard to beat

In simple supper-salad satisfaction guarantee

Where summer's poets thank the Lord for poems they can eat

Where golding wheat field billows like an ocean ebbs and flows...

Where overhead the sky beckons in bottomless blue pose/prose...

Where flower gardens toss a lure, sure to delight the sigh

Of summer's poets enchanted by petaled color-splurge...

Where bees are buried to their knees inside each nectar-fount...

Where golding wheat field billows like an ocean ebbs and flows

Where rural routes are fringed with wild lupine and chamomile

Where overhead the sky beckons in bottomless blue pose/prose

To summer's poets hypnotized by ballads that beguile

Where finding happiness is easier in sweet July

Where daybreak rolls across earth’s shoreline in a coral surge

Where flower gardens toss a lure, sure to delight the sigh

Of summer's poets enchanted by petaled color-splurge

Where bees are buried to their knees inside each nectar-fount

Where there are blooms enough to satisfy the thirst of all

Where the Creator knows how to stoke a syllabic count

From summer's poets eager to compose a madrigal

Where an air of contentment settles like dew-heady dust

Where clover fields yield a perfumed playground for butterflies

Where every backroad rouses a wild streak of wanderlust

In summer's poets looking for a country paradise

Where meals are gathered from a garden-green charcuterie

Oh my, but fresh-picked goodness garners five stars, hard to beat

In simple supper-salad satisfaction guarantee

Where summer's poets thank the Lord for poems they can eat

Where we hop out of bed to watch the sun come up at five

Where we linger till ten to feel dusk’s symphony immerse

Our senses, where best reasons we are glad to be alive

Keen summer's poets pressed for time to tame them into verse

Where July is an arms-wide-open, welcome-home embrace

Where shadow-pools beneath the maple tree are dark and deep

Where lavish looms spin lilies, lavender and Queen Ann’ s lace

While summer's poets smile and snare fond mementos to keep

© Janet Martin

Where we linger till ten to feel dusk’s symphony immerse

Our senses,...

Best of the Blessed or Ignorant Bliss

Today's poem-a-day prompt from Robert Lee Brewer.

For today's prompt, write a living poem.

The lap of luxury, I think

Is a bottomless well of ink

A wildness in the untamed grace

Of what to some, seems commonplace

A keen awareness of The One

Whose Sovereignty can't be outdone 

As, from each breath that He so wills

A sense of unplumbed wonder spills

Surely, best-of-the-blessed are we

who see through eyes of poetry

who find in the grind of life's grit

a kind of awe, in spite of it

to kindle, through its thick and thin

a mighty ocean 'neath our skin

where teeming tempests tug and roll

and rush the regions of the soul 

evoking in its sweep and surge

a sense of living on the verge

of  breath-stealing discovery

where almost-poems wait to be

set free, beneath the poet's pen

by we, Best of the Blessed, Amen 

p.s. (and if this is not how it is

rob us not of ignorant bliss

Indulge our erring theory

For the fine sake of poetry

Leave us to mine the deepest sigh 

for joy that money cannot buy

where quests to tame and wrest the roar 

of waves before they meet the shore

requires more than meets the eyes

of all who have not heard the cries

of a poem adrift, at sea

doomed to endless obscurity 

without whispered lifelines, ink-spun

to draw them from oblivion)

© Janet Martin

The best poems have no words!

God's love language is a universal dialect!

Psalm 103:22

Bless the LORD, all His works in all places of His dominion.

Bless the LORD, O my soul!

Psalm 150:6

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD!

 Hallelujah!

Sweet Saturday-morning Skirmish (between Poet and Prudence)

This daily/weekly Saturday morning tango is blissfully

unfamiliar to some, yet, I wouldn't trade it for a world of shiny

'ballroom' floors, as much as I dearly admire and strive to acquire

  brief glossy-floor bliss once in a while!

I try to balance ballads, oops I mean battles

with a bit of both poem and prudence. 😂😅💖

This beautiful battleground is composed of longing to linger on pages 

of past poets/artists

or tackling present responsibilities like prepping for Christmas!

Today's task; homemade chocolate bars

In the above recipe to clarify amounts;

 approx. 8-9 cups rice krispies, 2 cups peanuts and 11/2 cups coconut.)

Sometimes the battle is a toss-up between

pausing without pressure to percolate in the pure pleasure

of God's poetry in every season...

Whether gray...

...or gold!

...or vacuuming and fussing over delightful details

because Victoria is having friends 

over for a Christmas party this weekend!

Sweet Saturday Skirmish💓💓💓

Coffee pot beams with Columbian brew; ready/drained with of extra refills

Coffee pot beams with Columbian brew; ready with extra refills

Duty and Dream dance, a skippety-do; Poet and Prudence clash wills

Wonder is waiting with gifts still unfurled, often where we least suppose

Dawn is deflating night’s slumbering world with a sky full of hellos

Tuning spent ages with notes rearranged in compositions brand new

Learning’s lent pages divinely exchanged by He who loves me and you

Fueling reason with thankful reply for mercy’s replenished fount

Every season chock-full of surprises, too prolific to count

…thus, in the matter of work-to-do lists versus perhaps-poetry

Always a Saturday morning untwists two worlds that cannot agree

One (but a guess) a shining specimen of domestic excellence

One, happiness, pressed like wine from a pen never drained of Imminence

….coffee-pot beams with Columbian prose; ready with refills galore

Poet and Prudence tango, nose to nose ‘cross Saturday’s ballroom-floor

Weathering whispers that spar between ink and plain practicality

Untethering silver rivers that wink into….oh, which will it be

© Janet Martin

And hopefully this is my/our daily prayer;

'So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do,

do it all for the glory of God.

1 Cor.10;31

A Little Ink Reminder...

Life/love is poetry

waiting to be written...

Some days poem-possibility is like fruit, ripe for harvest and preserving,

...other days require (soul)-searching!

Ps.139:23-24

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.

...but every poet does well to remember Who bestows the ink

then, to be diligent and conscientious in our reply!

***

The troubles of this world could drain the poet’s pen of verse

Its weight of care could crush the lyric-spring within the heart

But what doth it profit a man to clench a fist and curse

When all it takes is each of us to do our willing part

To make this world a kinder place for our fellowman

To help each other weather trouble’s trouble while we can

The poet’s charge is more than ink-caper to paper pressed

But rather, an attempt to keep us wonderfully awed

A page can capture beauty, like a cloud by pink caressed

To replay when the day grows dark and we start to doubt God

Poetry preserves pictures long after seasons have set

So we remember tinctures we might otherwise forget

…the laughter after it has passed, the once-upon-childhood

Before the way time flies teaches the fledgling how to fly

It gentles bitter aftermath of love misunderstood

As the whisper of God compels the poet to reply

And rally us to be more humbly glad for me-‘n-you

Remembering who we will answer to when life is through

The trouble of this world will always be; the poet knows

The pen is mightier than sword; font is a holy thing

For the sacred longevity of written word bestows

Accountability for all touched by its rendering

Thus, before thought entrusts its erring tendencies to ink

The poet ought to ask the Author of Love how to think

The troubles of this world could drain the poet’s pen of rhyme

Its weight of care could crush the raring rush to write and write

Without the One whose replenishes joy, time after time

And overflows the wellspring of the heart with sheer delight

To share without exception, every hymn that frets to spill

And follow the direction of the Hand that lets the quill

...where the trouble that groans is never greater than His grace

Though pleasure/measure of a poem cannot erase creature-care

Like a soft kiss upon the cheek, a handshake or embrace

A poem can kindle a smile, a tear, a song, a prayer

To cheer each other on with kindness and humility

A little ink-reminder of God, spilled in poetry  

© Janet Martin

Happy September Saturday!

Poet's Tea

 

You may feast

on information

Theory,

theology

scientific explanation

hypothesis,

philosophy

I prefer

to sup on sips

Of ink

teased into

poetry

I prefer

the art

Of heart-shaped

Hopes

and Nope’s sting

reconciled

By possibility

Still waiting,

for ink-oceans

to run

wild

© Janet Martin

Rekindled Delight

 

Across a landscape ethereal

And not yet tamed by time

To journeymen of syllable

Unfurls a world of rhyme

And stars that poets climb

Sometimes knowledge alone is cursed

And deaf to the wild sound

That plagues the lowly bard with thirst

For wisdom not yet found

And lyrics still unbound

How ephemeral is the gate

That swings softly ajar

To usher through glimmers that bait

Poems that not yet are

Save in one fallen star

…snared on a shimmer of surprise

To thwart the stinging bite

Of words cut down to arrow size

To spur the songsters flight

In rekindled delight

The bull's eye of a poet's heart

Weathers many-a-test

Long suffering is worth the art 

And hunger worth the quest

Of sorrow at its best

© Janet Martin

The Poet's Yoke

 

A waltz with words that waft and twirl across a ballroom floor

The laughter of a little girl drifting from worlds of yore

A sense of imminence immersed in steadfast, common care

Of workaday and bills to pay and suppers to prepare

A sentimental ballad slipping through matters of fact

The art of bearing verses while keeping façade intact

And balancing the beckoning of worlds in want of ink

With sensible responses like cleaning the kitchen sink

To siphon from life’s thrum the rolling of a sort of sea

Rife with glints of spent summer and tomorrow’s mystery

Requires tireless patience while panning for lilt and rhyme

(This is not for the faint of heart, the art stealing time)

The poet’s yoke is made of air yet weighs a whisper-ton

With lyrics waiting to be snared and tamed and poem-spun

From brooding skies and sparkling eyes, from goodbyes and hellos

Each day unfurls a paradise of poems to compose

The merchant laughs and stuffs the chaff of trade into his sack

The maiden blushes; hopes he looks while she is looking back

The traffic rushes, the rain hisses underneath each wheel

The poet smiles and gathers manna for another meal

The poet's yoke is lily-soft yet claws the cloak of souls

With merciless persistence because always death's bell tolls

And who knows when the pen may fall prey to its solemn chime 

As the poet turns to behold the Giver of the rhyme 

 

Oh, pray they serve with honor the onus of pen and page

Because the life of written word survives from age to age

And who knows who will pause to read the stuff of wrangled ink

Therefore, the yoke should weigh enough to make the poet think

© Janet Martin

Okay, that's all for today, folks!

Wow! and maybe this year!

 Depends how tomorrow goes!

With much love, 

Janet

Wishing for us all, for 2023

 a fresh awareness of God

and a deeper reverence for Him,

 from whom all blessings flow

Quest of the Poet

Last week as I walked through a parking lot this leaf landed at my feet.

so, I picked it up...

It inspired the first stanza of this poem.

To pick up fallen leaves and press them into summertime

To woo from echo-sheaves, a few mementos, into rhyme

To enrich Ordinary with the wealthiness of less

Where lyrics of God’s glory author hope and happiness

To siphon from life’s ups and downs, keepsakes of common ground

To mend and dazzle heart shaped cups with treasures that confound

To showcase living’s simple joys with meek and thankful awe

To marvel at the patient poise of nature’s steadfast law

To thwart the sting and blight of biting words with beauty’s kiss

Life is too short to slight the sweep of so much we might miss

To cheer the wage of weariness with wonder to behold

Tendered to page through tears and tests of longing etched with gold

To leave unpenned the vile and vulgar, the boorish and base

But rather, weave a sense of smiles and friendship in its place

To hoist with holy feeling, love’s banners unfurled in font

And be a voice of healing in a broken world of want

To meet each other, heart to heart, through art of ink-finesse

Though ever face to face apart, together nonetheless

To find a diamond in the ruffled feathers of a thought

To bind the weathered wounds of love with blue forget-me-not

To will the jot and tittle of Becoming into bloom

And spill a little sunshine to a shadow-darkened room

To cast a glim of gladness into sadness that must be

And melt away brute madness with the torch of poetry

To lavish parchment pallor with the splendor of mid-June

And whisper to full color gray November’s afternoon

To coax a spark from embers of a dying place in time

And turn what one remembers into legacies of rhyme

© Janet Martin

Yesterday we woke to winter's wonderland!

Today the sun is doing its best to make it disappear

...before the next forecasted flurry!

Tug of Ink

PAD Challenge day 10: For today's prompt, write a struggle poem.

To board dawn's gleaming barge

While seasons ebb and flow...

To know when to say ‘yes’

To know when to say ‘no’

To hold to hope and happiness

Amidst love’s letting go

So much to touch and kiss

So much that used to be

So much to balance with the bliss

Of unpenned poetry

Today is always new

Immune it seems, to age

Let’s never grow too old to woo

Its poetry to page

Let’s slow dance, cheek to cheek

What is to be will be

Enough, my love to learn to speak

In tongues of poetry

Let the masses deploy

Long ladders to success

Enough, my love, to feast on joy

Of poem happiness

To press past the façade

Of front-line highs and lows

And to feel the *pleasure of God

In poems to compose

To board dawn’s gleaming barge

While seasons ebb and flow

To stay true to the humble charge

Of life’s ink undertow

© Janet Martin

"When I run, I feel God's pleasure" Eric Liddell

Acts 17:28

‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ 

As some of your own poets have said,

 ‘We are his offspring.’

Warriors of Poetry

 

My, my but life/love can be a hard-fought Poem!

Sometimes the empty page mocks the Poet

where frontline/first line footage thunders

like an unanswered prayer!

Each morning is like an empty page

waiting the Poem of Today.

First daylight's swift splash of sunrise has yielded\to just plain Rain Splash!

What will Ink and Quill spill today?

There is much more than meets the page

Of ink-blood left to spill

Surrender, facing center stage

Wears so much rebel still

Between the brute force of desire

And Wonder’s work-day frame

Smolder the embers of a fire

Font yet must fan to flame

Duty and beauty spar and meld

Like diamond-dazzled dust

While angst of prayer-answers withheld

Mold scaffoldings of trust

Sometimes a rhyme’s futility

Mocks the poet at war

With the very same enemy

That Eve did not ignore

My, my, the bloom of love can smart

The thorn that holds the rose

Can rip a hole right through the heart

With what God only knows

The fancy footwork of farewell

Kicks at the pricks; where verse

Is not enough to quench or quell

The blessing (or the curse)

Where age old agonies persist

And ink cannot assuage

The oceanic weight of mist

Waiting to spill to page

…as so much more than we can see

Roars through frontlines of air

While warriors of poetry

Must choose which hues to snare

© Janet Martin

Psalm 51:10

Create in me a clean heart, O God; 

and renew a right spirit within me.

Trove of Glimmers

 For the sake of the reader and a long must-do task list I must reel in the poetic rush this poem kindled...

She writes to relive, nay, preserve, the sparkle of the splash

Where soon the arms of Must will curve around childhood’s fleet dash...

She writes to ponder in her heart the faithfulness of God

To share the beauty of His art in sky... and sea... and sod...

She writes to feel the warp and wage where past and future merge

She braves the barrenness of page for the rush of the verge

She dredges deeps of heart and soul for a poem to snare

Like a fisherman born to troll phantom oceans of air

She writes to relive, nay, preserve, the sparkle of the splash

Where soon the arms of Must will curve around childhood’s fleet dash

Where, what in the moment may seem a very staying sum

Soon wafts like fragments of a dream she suddenly woke from

She writes to linger on the brink where dusk’s plum shadows sprawl

To paint with nothing but black ink, the wonder/thunder of it all

Where the drumroll of wanderlust ignores the shores of Time

She writes, to salvage from plumbed dust a memento of rhyme

She writes to garner from a trove of glimmers Bygone-blurred

The pleasantries of life and love immortalized in word

She writes to run her fingers through ethereal echo-fray

Where far to soon the dark runs blue and blush with break of day

She writes to wring from ragged ruin the raw rub of regret

To secure a sense of Still June when long its sun has set

She writes to keep at fingertips awareness of a toll

From which the garb of seasons slips to leave only Her soul

She writes to ponder in her heart the faithfulness of God

To share the beauty of His art in sky and sea and sod

To sift life’s gift with poetry, then share its happiness

To leave behind a legacy of mindful thankfulness

© Janet Martin