When In The Woods I See Not Life...

Be still, and know that I am God.

Ps.46:10

I craved a quick woodland-soak this morning

before plunging into Sat. tasks...

To delight in simplicity is quite enough to satisfy 

When in the woods I see not life as sinister or crude or mean

Where the bird is a minister and the tree, a four-season queen

The air is like a silk scarf drawn through draughty awnings overhead

And the unruly little tongue is content to leave words unsaid

When in the woods I see not life as happiness to hurry through

No scales to weigh or mark success by what we do or fail to do

The frantic chase toward twilight's brief eulogy subsides, leaf-hushed

I am content with the insight of Nature's poetry, unrushed

When in the woods I see not life as battlefields for more or less

The creature is cut downs to sighs and yields to solitude's caress

Where factual epiphanies eclipse the graveyard-gilded dust 

As I gaze up, up past the trees into the Almost Face I trust

When in the woods I see life as a grand sandcastle, briefly leased 

The shock and ruin of dreamlands commands attention like a feast

Of effortless tranquility, like treetops reaching for the sky   

To delight in simplicity is quite enough to satisfy 

When in the woods I see not life as something to dread or adore

But rather like a gift that soon becomes a mem'ry, nothing more 

And here I am content to pledge to keep my wants humble and few 

To count it as a privilege to grieve the loves that once I knew

Janet Martin

a few snap-shots from previous woodland-soaks...

Here, In the Bloom of Dying...

Here, in woodland cathedral

Here, in a hall of leaves

Flowers are falling, autumnal

Petal from rainbow eaves

Here, in the bloom of dying

Wind-song and quiet vying

From lofty loom soft-sighing

Nature, its glory grieves

Here, in the halo of wooing

Here, in the harrowed fields

We witness Time undoing

What nothing mortal shields

Here, like the corpse of laughter

From tow’ring coppice-rafter

Into the ever-after

Nature its glory yields

Here, in a world of wonder

Here, in a swirl red-gold

Spirals spring’s full-grown plunder

Into earth’s umber hold

Here, in a spree of splendors

Nature its tree surrenders

While its Caretaker renders

Nature its glory folds

© Janet Martin

Victoria and I had a lemon-tea party in the neighbour's bush yesterday...

(it was going to be a sit-and-sip, but turned out to be a tromp-and-a-h-h/awe!!,

because we both felt there was so much to see in so little time) 

The Wood Is Such a Lovely Place...

The wood is such a lovely place

Apart from Time’s progressive race

With green of moss and limbs that toss

Their loss of life like layered lace

The wood is such a lovely deep

A temple beneath blue-sky keep

Nature depletes and then repeats

Its circuit of bud, bloom and sleep

The wood is like a garden plot

Of bracken and forget-me-not

With log to sit and rest a bit

To talk to God with naught but thought

The wood is happy like a child

A home to creatures of the wild

A wind-song, leaf-song, bird-song berth

Its timberland heaven on earth

The wood is such a lovely peace

Cedar of scent and pine-bough heath

Where we should pause often because

It reminds us to stop and breathe

© Janet Martin

Walk in the Winter-woods

Maybe it’s the hush as it traces dappled spaces

Dripping from lofty and bare-naked limb

Or the meekness of nonchalant hemlock fingers

Strumming the hour in a reverent hymn

Maybe it’s the absence of mortal creation

In this sanctuary, not made with hands

Where winnowing winds murmur kind, tender mercies

Softening duty’s despotic demands

The nuthatch flits from its tree-hole safe-haven

The language of leaf-song has slipped to the earth

Yet the breeze slides through the turrets of summer

Teasing the silence with evergreen mirth

Maybe it’s the absence of primal persuasion

Here, in the off-spring of Eden’s paradise

There is no clamoring intimidation

Where century-shaped pillars reach to the skies

What is it about a walk in the woodlands?

This beautiful garden bereft of cruel strife

Where shoulders, care-weighted upon our arrival

Are no longer bent beneath burdens of life

Time charts its discourse of four-season struggle

The woods are a glorious four-season reprieve

And perhaps we all would remain carefree children

If we wandered through the woodlands every eve

© Janet Martin