Winnowed World

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, 

 that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

Psalm 90:14

Without More to live for than This

life would be a leap of lack! 

But by the grace of God

we may sing for joy

and be glad all our days!

Time's season-circuit seems to spin faster and faster

as the years fly by...

I feel like I just planned and planted this year's gardens

and already we are gathering its final fare

and 'tucking' flower-haunts in for a nap!

Season-circuits sweep the surface

Of the earth and disappear

Before-after, sorrow-laughter

Meld in mementos of Here

Soft and subtle, brusque rebuttal

Grinds the gears of live-and-learn

Bitter-sweeter, dusk-defeater

Fuels flues of No Return

Buds and flowers, barren bowers

Season-circuit spins and spills

Giving, taking, sleeping, waking

Want and wonder taunts and thrills

One door opens while one closes

Rearranging points of view

Rush of roses soon exposes

Dust to dust’s inherent due

Tend to duty bent with beauty

Dazzling dreamlands laid to waste

Working, playing, hoping, praying

Lingering while hours haste

Sacred splendor, mean and tender

Keens the crux of have and hold

Kind and cruel binding duel

Weans Time’s tux of autumn-gold

Where the embers of September’s

Mellow, yellow flickers fade

Where the mettle of the petal

Falls like music-notes soft-played

Where the flurry of our hurry

Stirs a blur of Must-to-mist

Unfurled, winnowed world of windows

Full of faces farewell-kissed

© Janet Martin

Because You Can't Have One Without the Other

(I apologize to you who read, sometimes before I've found 

some editing flaws I missed previously...

These poems generally get penned and posted amidst 

MUCH more than merely writing)

Wow! going from 23C yesterday to 6C this morning gets one's attention!

There's no denying it: another garden-year is drawing to a close!

But the flowers are not going to fade without a fight!

They've shrugged off a few frosty kisses already!

Maple trees toss their fiery tresses, as if daring Father Time!

He just smiles because he knows who always wins in the end.

October's to-do list is bittersweet!

-cut back or pull out spent glory.

-Harvest final fare

-Dig out flower bulbs that can't withstand winter-brr!

-plant flower bulbs for spring tulips etc.

-Collect seeds for gardens not planted yet

-Tuck leaf-duvets over slumbering flowerbeds

-Plan for next year's growing season/gardens

The folding always follows the holding💞

Sometimes I tend to rue the shadows of longing’s despair

Forgetting that it is the sun that puts the shadows there

How quick the readiness of thorns beneath love’s lovely rose

Can prick the headiness of holding with soft curtain close

The hellos that fill hugs/mugs with happiness ignites the knell

That trembles in the offing that assembles fond farewell

The wind that woos the lover to the darling of his heart

Is the same wind that hovers, to dearly draw them apart

Oh look! The baby smiles and coos and sits, walks, runs, then flies

Time’s book full of spent centuries still takes love by surprise

Thus, I cannot afford to stand too long with mournful stare

To gaze upon a world that fell to pirates of the air

Where waves that roll across the shore and thrill children at play

Are followed by the waves that wash their sandcastles away

And the breath-taking beauty of life’s garden in full wreath

The prelude to the duty of the grave that lies beneath

Sometimes, I tend to rue the letting go of seasons felled

Until I look back, humbly glad for all I had and held

Sometimes, I tend to rue the rending ache for seasons spent

Until, with awe I thank God for the loveliness He lent

© Janet Martin

Sometimes, I tend to rue the letting go of seasons felled

Until, with awe I thank God for the loveliness I held...

Dear Sir of Summer Sorrow

 

For me the end of summer/September is always bittersweet!

Because summer, always full of much to do,

 always flies by far too quickly 

and September feels a little like the Season of Looking Back

at the Summer of Life.

But autumn hastens too, 

so let's pursue its precious purpose 

with thankful gladness before it is gone!

Below, pages from the book

The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady

Dear sir of summer sorrow

Dear ma’am if I may

There is no sweet tomorrow

To bring back yesterday

Futile to while the hour

In bittersweet lament

None can restore the flower

Of yester-summer spent

To everything a season

Soft-slipping out of reach

To every day a Reason

To learn what it would teach

To pay careful attention

To what soon disappears

Into the blue dimension

Of ageless yesteryears 

Because autumn’s wayfaring

Soon hastens through our skin

Let’s linger in its bearing

Ere winter closes in

© Janet Martin

Eccles.3:1-8

To everything there is a season,

and a time for every purpose under heaven:

2a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to break down and a time to build,

4a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

6a time to search and a time to count as lost,

a time to keep and a time to discard,

7a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 7:14
In the day of prosperity be joyful,

 but in the day of adversity consider: 

God also hath set the one over against the other,

 to the end that man should find nothing after him.

Of Spent Summer or Of Summer Spent

 Happy First Day of Fall 

The hour is upon us

Where bower, fen and dell

Are laden with the onus

Of flowering farewell

The season of Spent Summer

Like an ocean of stars

Hangs soft upon the tremor

Of autumn’s kindled bars

In thrum of shadow-dapples

In rum-colored remains

In sums of plums and apples

And wild aster-fringed lanes

In diamond studded fretwork

Of gossamer design

Where spider’s artful network

Dazzles shrubs, gates and vines

In countless ways and wonders

Of teeming crook and crease

Earth’s quiet canvas thunders

With many a masterpiece

In Cana lily taper

Brandishing scarlet flares

In leaves, like gilt-edged paper

A Fine Author prepares

In 'toxicating scents of

Ginger, cinnamon, cloves

In foraged storage boxes

For sweaters, scarves, hats, gloves

In zinnia pomp and splendor

In bossy blue jay shriek

In contemplative candor

Of truths time cannot tweak

In hunts for garden treasure

Of Yukon gold and such

In savoring the measure

Of moments meeting/meting touch

In revamped whims and wishes

In sun-glossed tassels tossed

With Jack Frost's first soft kisses

And roses summer lost

The hour is upon us

Where the gleam in Time’s gaze

Stokes a sacred awareness

Of man’s flower-like days

© Janet Martin

...and what a stunning debut to the first day of fall!

September Stage...

Aren't you glad fall is not a bully, but eases summer hearts toward the door of season-change

with such a pleasant demeanor we cannot be too sad...

Fall flutters in on zinnia-wings...

...on sedum's demure blush

Beneath a sweep of cumulus and nimbostratus skies

Soybean fields glitter with impressions of bronzed butterflies

Fall shimmers in on misty morning glory mantled stairs...

Fall flutters in on zinnia-wings and sedum’s demure blush

On cinnamon and cardamom and ginger-burnished bush

Beneath a sweep of cumulus and nimbostratus skies

Soybean fields glitter with impressions of bronzed butterflies

Fall moseys in while we get cozy in sweaters and socks

While harvest spills and toil refills jars, bins, barrels and crocks

While amber ambience begins to steep the atmosphere

With the sweet-bitter sense of summer’s farewell drawing near

Fall eases in where trees begin to tell the tender truth

How even earth cannot preserve verve of eternal youth

But yields its hills and fields to the law and order of God

Who orchestrates the floodgates of bud and seed, sky and sod

Fall shimmers in on misty morning glory mantled stairs

It gleams in streams of golden rod, in purple aster-flares

It loiters in the orchard where the apple tree is bent

With proof of summer’s fond, fruit-laden, fading testament

Fall tints the countryside with hints of ‘what must be will be’

Before the End of Summer is declared officially

Like the turn of the tide fall starts to flow across a shore

With ripple over ripple until summer is no more

Fall sparkles in September's winnowing of summer's ties

September, like a harbinger with kind and laughing eyes

Is gently drawing autumn's door ajar before the rose

Has strewn its petals on the floor of summer's curtain-close 

© Janet Martin

Happy Sweet, September Saturday!

Motley Masterpiece

Hello again😊💓 

Due to this year's vacation being much quieter than any before,

(due to adult children with other commitments)

 let's get the sentimental tribute out of the way first, okay?

💝💖

I murmured the first line of this poem as we arrived at our cottage last Saturday,

 before/in spite of a much needed and appreciated week of R&R!

Many a pleasant hour can pass flawlessly here

while reminiscing, dreaming and simply enjoying the views/hues...

To every thing there is a season, 

 a time to every purpose under the heaven: Eccles.3:1

There is a hollow in her heart where children used to be

A sacred sense of loss amidst life’s generosity

The tender impact of love’s Once Upon What Disappears

Strikes Something in Her bosom that only a mother hears

Where edges, smoothed by ebb and flow of time’s finessing touch

Perfects a wake of letting go, echo-keepsakes, and such

There is a blade that carves a niche impossible to find

Sun-sparkles siphoned from a splash of seasons left behind

Amass, to meld, with measure of moments-to-memories

A panoramic treasure that only a mother sees

Of happiness soft-startled by the bittersweet divide

Twixt tempests snuffed by nightfall and today’s swift-ebbing tide

There is a hunger that poetic font cannot appease

A heart-shaped hollow of frames filled with fondest memories

Where twilight claims its dauntless prey as moment-sums compose

A Masterpiece of Yesterday only a mother knows

Of what time cannot reimburse and yet cannot estrange

In the clash twixt heaven and earth beneath the hand of change

There is a hollow in her heart too darling to portray

A sweet and sentimental smart where children used to play

While time will weave its winnowing into felled thoroughfares

To leave beneath her skin Something only a mother bears

Where, somehow past’s increase endears an echo-escapade

A motley masterpiece of years that she would never trade

© Janet Martin