Spring-wonder

 

Spring, and esp. May, seems to ignite wonder at every turn!

below, a few wonder-frames which helped to kindle today's poem...

Wonder erects joy’s palaces in hidden landscapes of the heart

It spills from tulip chalices to thrill spectators with God-art...

In blossom-dappled masterpieces freely and profusely flung/hung

Where His handiwork never ceases to amaze both old and young...

Spring-wonder winds its way through smiles, like meadow-brooks meandering

Earth’s first burst of green-kindled isles replenishes hope’s eagle-wing

As gossamer-gold filigree weaves halos through lackluster limbs

Earth’s beauty spills abundantly from nature’s pockets, full of hymns

Wonder erects joy’s palaces in hidden landscapes of the heart

It spills from tulip chalices to thrill spectators with God-art

What meets the eye oft floods the soul with happiness no ink can tame

It triumphs winter’s weary toll with spring’s unfailing claims to fame

Wonder awakens gratefulness for spring’s return perfectly-timed

Praise God, whose loving faithfulness is evidenced in buds, bloom-primed

In blossom-dappled masterpieces freely and profusely flung/hung

Where His handiwork never ceases to amaze both old and young

The Composer of roses rouses us to slow our hasty stride

He bids us pause, then sweetly wows us with spring-mantled countryside

Wonder transcends thought’s plumbed dimensions; worship authors purest praise

As God captures our attention in grandest, minutest ways

We are too quickly prone to grumble; prone to fear, to doubt and fret

Till wonder makes us truly humble; if but for a micro-sec

When caught off guard by preaching flowers, bowers rich with bird and leaf

As the Maestro of sun and showers reminds us whose laws are chief

© Janet Martin

As gossamer-gold filigree weaves halos through lackluster limbs

Earth’s beauty spills abundantly from nature’s pockets, full of hymns...

We are too quickly prone to grumble; prone to fear, to doubt and fret

Till wonder makes us truly humble; if but for a micro-sec...

A Breathless Pause...

I felt it the other evening on a twilight trek,

and this morning where, after last night's thunder that rattled our windows

it seems to have cracked a vault!

The temps are climbing!

Do you feel it too 

on this day between Somber Good Friday

and glorious Easter Morn?!

A breathless pause...

A breathless pause before applause erupts in verdant wow

And laughter roars through bud-shaped doors studding still barren bough

Where Sense of Verge ignites an immense urge to dance and sing

Because the earth replete with birth kindles hope’s song of spring

…and windowpanes and puddled lanes wear raindrop’s happy tears

They tickle timid shoots and quicken woodland’s teeming cheers

And robin trills and daffodils and dormant hills reply

And all the world is silver-pearled beneath a beaming sky

The lawn is full of sticks where nature’s arborist pruned trees

And eggs are full of chicks that youngsters are eager to squeeze

The garden smiles, the breeze beguiles us to linger to gaze

At sanguine scenes played out in dreams of flower-precious days

…and we all feel youth’s fresh appeal; the zeal of joy renewed

Ambition streams with hopes and dreams and humble gratitude

To God, because a breathless pause captures Life held at bay

Before applause erupts because the stone is rolled away

© Janet Martin

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. 

He who believes in Me, though he may die,

 he shall live.

Selah - How Deep The Father's Love For Us [with lyrics]

Divine Drumroll

 'A poem should never be centered' Victoria told me yesterday morning (something she learned in the poetry class she took in her previous semester). What?!! I gasped, and realized that my poem-book collection is filled with 'uncentered' pages yet it never occurred to me why; but line length, layout, pauses etc are part of a poem's persona and centering it on the page removes that element of the poem! (proving how much I have yet learn when it comes to poetry)

So, please forgive the previous posts. From now on I will post to the left of the page. (it is on my wish-list to take some poetry courses but maybe in my 60's??) Life seems to have drained my mental energy tank right now!

Do you feel it too?! Beneath earth's dull façade, a kind of divine drumroll...

Beneath earth’s umber solitude
After winter’s gale is subdued
A petal-prelude starts to play
On listless landscapes, stark and gray

Ah, can’t you sense a teeming surge
Where raindrops dance on dreamland’s verge
Ere violets, tulips, daffodils
Inaugurate summer-long thrills

…where soon lackluster sweeps will gleam
With nature’s nuances of green
With blossom-blush, where naked limbs
Await the garb of leaf-song hymns

Where spring’s impending loveliness
Begins to stir beneath a tress
Of barren boughs and dormant deeps
Instilled with promises God keeps

Ah, can’t you feel the rush of hope
Beneath the burlap-swaddled slope
Arousing a divine drumroll
Resounding in both land and soul

© Janet Martin

Gen.8:22

“As long as the earth endures, 

seedtime and harvest, 

cold and heat,

summer and winter, 

day and night 

will never cease.”

Something About Planting Season

The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.

Ps.24:1

What are you singing, asked my husband on Saturday

as he heard me humming while I worked in the flower garden...

I thought for a moment and realized I was singing this stanza

(to no fixed tune😅🎵)

which often comes to mind while I putter in the garden,

The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birds for mirth,--

One is nearer God's heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth...

(full poem below post)

Something about planting season overflows the heart with cheer...

When the plow breaks dormant fallow and dust’s pungent incense spills...

Something about green-spun bowers bursts the heart with happiness...

Gardens, showcasing spring flowers, fuels worship’s epic ‘yes’

Something about lilac fragrance, enchanting warm winds of change

Makes us feel like God is granting good, old days naught can estrange...

Something about planting season overflows the heart with cheer

Hope rekindles wearied/worried reason with fresh starts, year after year

As the age-old call of duty/beauty hails from barren sweeps/deeps of sod

Toil is charged with awe for beauty/duty, cradled in the hand of God

When the plow breaks dormant fallow and dust’s pungent incense spills

When the bough brandishes halos of blossom and leafy thrills

When, once more faith is the substance of seeds scattered to the earth

Joy, akin to Eve of Christmas awes us with wonders of birth

Something about green-spun bowers bursts the heart with happiness

Gardens, showcasing spring flowers, fuels worship’s epic ‘yes’

Something about fresh-turned furrows fills us with humble content

Planting season helps heal sorrows that we cannot circumvent

Something about heavens laughing in blue hues beyond our ken

Feels like angels autographing May afternoon with God’s pen

Something about lilac fragrance, enchanting warm winds of change

Makes us feel like God is granting good, old days naught can estrange

Makes us feel like God is giving earth glimpses of Heaven-ness 

Makes us believe man is living in love’s lap of faithfulness 

Makes us want to thirst and hunger for favors His love deploys/employs

Makes us suddenly feel younger in a world of simpler joys

Something about planting season overflows the heart with mirth

Something in the air is teasing graves with melodies of birth

Something about spring's apparel puts a smile upon the face

Pink and yellow, green and purple masterpieces of God's grace

*Something about, when yon cloud tips like a big, watering can

Makes us marvel, like the Psalmist and echo awe's, 'what is man?'

Something about labor halted, grants us opportunity

To be sure God is exalted above likes of you and me 

Something about planting season sings of God’s mercies renewed

Earth is gaping with remission, kindling hymns of gratitude

Seed is throbbing with provision; miracles infuse the sod

Something about planting season draws us to the heart of God

© Janet Martin  

Something about, when yon cloud tips like a big, watering can

Makes us marvel, like the Psalmist and echo awe's, 'what is man?'

* I thought the poem was complete then a good, old thunderstorm rolled through

inspiring one more, the second last stanza. 

(my apologies to those who prefer a quick read)😅💓

..and below is the poem mentioned at the beginning of this post: 

God's Garden

THE Lord God planted a garden

In the first white days of the world,

And He set there an angel warden

In a garment of light enfurled.

So near to the peace of Heaven,

That the hawk might nest with the wren,

For there in the cool of the even

God walked with the first of men.

And I dream that these garden-closes

With their shade and their sun-flecked sod

And their lilies and bowers of roses,

Were laid by the hand of God.

The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birds for mirth,--

One is nearer God's heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth.

For He broke it for us in a garden

Under the olive-trees

Where the angel of strength was the warden

And the soul of the world found ease.

Dorothy Frances Gurney

Sweet Synchronicity (of endings and beginnings)

Final prompt for April's poem-a-day challenge from Robert Lee Brewer @ Writer's Digest!

For today's Two-for-Tuesday prompt:

Write a The End poem, and/or...

Write a Beginning poem.

The trees are beginning to don sheer, green chiffon!

A welcome sign that surely now

Old Man Winter has gone 😏😊

A breathless beckoning appeals 

It throbs in barren limb

Until the bud relents its seals

And frees a flower-hymn

As a Baton we cannot see

Conducts a mighty choir

And homage to God's Majesty/fealty

Resounds in every spire

Each lilting gold-green note unfolds

A lacy leaf  'hello'

Earth's eager audience beholds

Glimpses of spring's Maestro 

And hails, with humble gratitude

The Author of the song

That spills from hill and dell and wood

In winter's sweet so-long

In subtle synchronicity

Of hugs and tugs unfurled

On farewell's heels a symphony

Of welcome sweeps the world 

~Janet Martin

For All the Ways of Wonderful...

Yesterday's poem-a-day prompt from Robert Lee Brewer @ Writer's Digest

For today's prompt, write a homonym poem.

I began this post yesterday morning before Duty Beauty hailed...

The brook gurgles and bursts with lays

That sparkle to the sea...

The robin, quite industrious

Flits to and fro, intent...

From backroads to main thoroughfares

And all points in between

The landscape tosses fresh manes, fair

In dashing hues of green

The woodland wears an air of wealth

The wares of nature, free

For all to drink to our health

From founts of leaf-primed tree

Spring gushes from a trillion springs

Earth’s wakened deluge streams

Where bare branch bears from supple strings

A rush of bud-requiems

The robin, quite industrious

Flits to and fro, intent

In spite of housewife’s threat and fuss

To build nest in the vent

The brook gurgles and bursts with lays

That sparkle to the sea

To see the birds and hear their praise

Births praise in you and me

…for yellow frill of daffodil

For silver raindrop waltz

For purple pansy-violet thrill

For deep, blue, welkin vaults

For pastel-pink of blossom tulle

For sunbeam’s golden kiss

For all the Ways of Wonderful

Spring weighs our gaze with bliss

In beauty of both earth and sky 

In heaven-hints unfurled

Without reserve, from God on high 

To all the wooing world 

© Janet Martin

Isa.40:22

He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth;

its dwellers are like grasshoppers.

He stretches out the heavens like a curtain,

and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

click HERE to read in full Isa. 40, entitled Here is Your God

…for yellow frill of daffodil

For deep, blue, welkin vaults

For all the Ways of Wonderful

Spring weighs our gaze with bliss

Tell-tale Signs of Joy to Come (on the laughing tide of life)

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

For today's prompt, take the phrase "Tell (blank),"

replace the blank with a new word or phrase,

make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

In Ontario we are in the see-saw season of

'ah, spring, oh, winter, ah, spring, oh-h...'

Beneath the garden bench crocuses beam with plucky grace...

Futile to try to pry the bud to haste the bloom, or seize

A broom to sweep dustings of snow from hills and streets and lanes

To everything a season; soon the nakedness of trees

Will don fresh fronds of emerald lace and lofty leaf-refrains

Nature is never anxious, never ruffled by protest

It does not miss a beat, no matter how we rue its pace

Ah look, in the crook of the apple tree, a robin's nest

Beneath the garden bench crocuses beam with plucky grace

Foolish to chase the wind or shake an ineffectual fist

At Old Man Winter clinging to what not-a-one can keep

Ah, let him roar and war against the tug of shores, sun-kissed

Soon soft zephyrs will dance across meadows dappled with sheep

Futile to fret. Let hope whet appetites for joys at hand

As the first tell-tale signs of spring intensify until

Nothing can stem the laughing tide of life that sweeps the land

With green grandeur, pink blossom-blush and yellow daffodil

Janet Martin

Spring Waltz (Mariage d'Amour) Chopin

The first line in the 3rd stanza drew me to Ecclesiastes!

The endeavor...

Eccles.1:14

Ecclesiastes 1:17
So I set my mind to know wisdom and madness and folly;

 I learned that this, too, is a pursuit of the wind...

Ecclesiastes 2:11

Yet when I considered all the works that my hands had accomplished

 and what I had toiled to achieve, I found everything to be futile,

 a pursuit of the wind; there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 2:17

So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. 

For everything is futile and a pursuit of the wind.

Ecclesiastes 2:26

To the man who is pleasing in His sight, 

He gives wisdom and knowledge and joy,

 but to the sinner He assigns the task of gathering and accumulating

 that which he will hand over to one who pleases God.

 This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind.

Ecclesiastes 4:4

I saw that all labor and success spring from a man's envy of his neighbor. 

This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind.

Ecclesiastes 4:16

There is no limit to all the people who were before them. 

Yet the successor will not be celebrated by those who come even later. 

This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind.

Ecclesiastes 6:9

Better what the eye can see than the wandering of desire. 

This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind.

The conclusion...

Ecclesiastes 12:13
When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this:

 Fear God and keep His commandments,

 because this is the whole duty of man.