How Soft a Summer's Day...

How soft a summer’s day

Can ease the light away

And tease the air with twilight where

The stars come out to play

How swift a summer’s noon

Falls prey to vesper-tune

Like the romance of love’s first glance

In a slow-dance called June

How soon a summer’s worth

Of flowers deck the earth

Where bloom succumbs and thus becomes

The full-circle of birth

How still a summer’s tears

Can seep away in years

We linger where its painted stair

Lowers and disappears

How smooth a summer's sky

Can wring an hour dry

Where whispers slip in moments drip

-ping to the by-and-by

How soft a summer’s day

Can strum a life away

Beneath a brush where eons rush

In rivers gold and gray

© Janet Martin

...When It Is Summer

It's wikem-day! hurray!  

... but when it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and vice versa. wikipedia

It’s silver-frothed laughter a-drift on gold dusk

Soft-clothed in chambray of red roses and musk

A mist mantled meadow, dew-dust elixir

Of dawn dipped in diamonds when it is summer

It’s dinner aboard flora-frigates of June

Its pink morning moorings and high blue-sky noon

Where dog-days and heatwaves and green free-ways blur

And we are all neighbors when it is summer

It’s bare-feet in flip-flops, time’s sun-sparkle splash  

It’s lingering on maple-drawn shadow-sash

Its cricket-choirs, camp-fires, earth-wide garden-rooms

Its Color unstoppered from flasks filled with blooms

It’s shores washed with sea-song and corridors hung

With ponds full of children and fronds jewel-strung

Its bracken-strewn hollows where bronze breezes stir  

The lap-lap of hours when it is summer

© Janet Martin

Upsy-daisy

We pretend we’re brave,

Wave and tell them to ‘fly’

And to reach for the rooftops

Of dream-sequined sky

We pretend we're ready

...with unsteady grin

We clap while the hour

Fills its bubble-skin

We pretend we’re excited

In spite of the fear

That swirls summer’s laughter

With winter-stark tear

  

We pretend we’re stronger

Than we really are

And lend them a shoulder

As they reach for the stars

© Janet Martin

Sweet, Sweet June

The green of May can never stay but climbs the tallest trees

As Dandelion gold unfolds in soft-swept silver seas

The Thing that long we pined for in the wintry afternoon

Unfurls in girlish pink of lupine, peony and June

The lilac-breeze and white-frothed melodies of orchard-tress

Falls prey to yesterday as May dons farewell’s emptiness

And we hunt for permission slips signed by the blue-eyed sky

To linger longer on the turf of bloom and butterfly

The footing of an hour, like a bower gold and gray

Is fragile as the halo on welkin of waking day

It disappears in moments filling years, where tears of time

Trickle in tick-by-tock descent the ladder that we climb

New little boys dash from dawn’s doors, their mothers learn new prayers

A new old generation surrenders to rocking chairs

And ever new, the old, though never reimbursing hours

Eases the petal from its fold and refills June with flowers 

 The green of May can never stay, the banter of the breeze
Unfolds its Dandelion-gold to soft-swept silver seas

 As every Thing we pined for in cold, storm-lorn afternoon

Unfurls in pink of lupine, peony and sweet, sweet June

© Janet Martin

Part of a Plan

Oh, who am I that God would grant

Again, into my erring grip

The essence of faith’s fellowship

Where I am prone to weep, ‘I can’t’

Ah yes, I am part of a plan

That proves the grace whereby I go

Allowing more than sight can show

So I must cling to God’s ‘I can’’

© Janet Martin

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? 

If God is for us, who can be against us?
 Rom.8:31