April Aria

 I took this video a few nights ago, but as soon as I tried to get closer to the source the song stopped...

Spring’s flood-and-bud beginnings lilt

With dreams of days to come

The sky, like a blue carafe spilt

In blush and emerald sum

How fair its flock of sheep heaped soft

Upon cerulean hill

How rare its palette wafts aloft

Spring’s awesome art to spill

The snows of winter's b-r-r-r are past

Its dirge in purged hearts sighs

Where showers stir a flower-cast

Of petal-storm replies

With violet kiss earth’s drowsing span

Shakes off its last repose

To shoulder, since the curse of man

Both nettle and red rose

The woodland rings with newborn things

The peeper in the pond

The robin and the thrasher sings

Where green-spun strings respond

Bare vault shivers, expectancy

Quivers in every limb

Time’s bow slides slow across earth’s lea

And April is its hymn

© Janet Martin

Fresh Try...

PAD Challenge day 24:For today’s prompt, write a poem in which something is lost and then regained.

I felt so bad, the chance I had 

To do that Thing was gone

Or so I thought, then loving God

Gentled the dark with dawn

Across the loss of days gone by

From sea to shining sea

He filled the sky with a fresh 'try'

And opportunity

Janet Martin

This is the day the Lord has made;
We will rejoice and be glad in it.

Ps. 118:24 

Wishing you a most blessed day of rest.

Birthday Gift

A birthday is a gift from God

To which none can compare

Because it proves above all else

His kind, unfailing care

This freefall from time’s tick-tock fount

For all its discontent

Sends us one special day to count

The blessings God has lent

Then we become most humbly glad

For this, our gift of days

And what a blessed year we had

To give God all the praise

~Janet Martin

Every day people all around the world celebrate this wonderful gift...a birthday! 

If today is your special day I hope it is a truly blessed one.

Last night we attended our first ever 60th birthday party and Time it seems, for all of us is a slippery thing we can never quite grasp!

This Is No Paradise...

( excerpt from the book The Wind That Shakes the Barley)

This is no paradise

Where we press prayers and tears

And humble home-made heaven-bits

To time’s fretwork of years

This is no trial run

Where once-a-lifetime pours

With nothing more than mere moments

Time’s path to heaven’s doors

This is no small matter

This kiss of mist that peers

Into time’s cup, a little breath

And then it disappears

…not into stone-cold graves

Nor into nought’s abyss

But into Vast Eternity

Where only God IS

© Janet Martin

Take Off Your Shoes, This is Holy Ground

Writer's Digest PAD Challenge 23:For today’s prompt, write a footwear poem. A poem about shoes,or
  If you’d prefer not to dedicate a poem to your footwear, just mention footwear somewhere in the poem.

Glimmer on a fence-post

Shimmer on a leaf

Hint of pastel tint upon

Orion’s star-spun sheaf

Winnowing of silence

Aria of lark

Stirs glass air, a perfect prayer

Pierces dreamlands dark

Deft, God-breath of mercy

Lengthening of grace

Dawn's first gold undoing

Sod and sky’s embrace

Faint, the waking hour

Paints earth with a sigh

Forgiveness, hope's flower

Filling up the sky

Murmur of mist melting

Drawing hills and homes

Upon halcyon countryside

So the morning comes

© Janet Martin

Above quote from this book...

Of 'Miss-this' Replay

Writer's Digest PAD Challenge day 23:For today’s prompt, write a footwear poem.

I know someday I'll miss this:
These days that hear me say
'Make your beds,
clean up your rooms
and put your shoes away'

I'll miss this common heaven
Of mundane disarray
'hang up your coat
and back-pack, oh,
and put your shoes away

Etched on fond memory
When I am old and gray
I'll play those days
When I could say,
Please, put your shoes away

...hang up wet towels,
don't leave your spills
for me to wipe, and pray
please, when you come in take a sec
and put your shoes away...

I wonder if, someday perchance
They'll hear me as they say
To their teen-sters,
Dream deaf and blind
 'please, put your shoes away' 

Janet Martin~

The World Woke Green Today

 I stared and stared when I got up...what is different? oh, the world woke green!

The world woke green today

Freed from dull garb it wore

See how the earth its Lord obeys

The world woke, green once more

Its tattered underlay

Is overcome with spring

The imminence of blooming days

Saturates everything

We forgive winter’s chill

And the ill winds that blew

Because after they’ve had their fill

The world wakes green and new

© Janet Martin