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

December Dusk...

Dusk's vivid colors caught my eye while I was cleaning the upstairs before supper.

(We are blessed with beautiful, autumn-like weather here...gorgeous, unless, like Victoria you are pl-e-e-e-a-ding and hoping for snow:)

Gold ravishes the countryside

Prelude to blue nocturnal tide

Where shadows reach, lanky and gray

Before night washes them away

The barge that bore the afternoon

Is moored beneath a breath of moon

How friendly is the dying day

A rushing, hushing interplay

Subtle, dusk’s deeper shades begin

Like wave-swells when the tide comes in

Soundless its surge splurges until

It swallows up the field and hill

...and suddenly the earth is bare

Wrapped in a cloth of velvet air

Where star-gazers with pensive sighs

Ponder the haste of Time’s demise

© Janet Martin

Mad With Joy

Inspired by Sasha's post here

Write then,

Go; mad with joy of newborn day,

Or pup

Of lithesome grin of lad,

Of fresh-mown hay

Drink up

This cup where its air runs, rife

With un-penned poetry

And life is far too small to bear

In silent agony

So, write then

Mad with bliss, let life kiss you full

On the lips

Ere it slips to oblivion

Gossamer, an

Eclipse

Of moment over moment, lost

To past’s eternity

Of sad joy never madly snared

And bared in Poetry

© Janet Martin

No Shadow of Turning...

Far-off heaven sheds its shadow

Like a grand bough loosed of leaf

The meadow emerges ‘neath splurges of gold

Night garnered to Orion’s sheaf

A common tide rife with Mercy

Pours from lofty well-springs of grace

We cannot tell what its citadel veils

But we know Who holds it in place

There is no shadow of turning

In He who directs Night and Day

A steadfast Presence midst Time’s essence of change

That even the mistrals obey

 Therefore, ere eventide chases

 Night-shadows to meadow and range

Tis sweet peace to know we go grounded in grace

Of God in Whom there is no change

© Janet Martin

 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

James 1:17

There is a lot of talent on The Voice this year, but I can't help but cheer for this guy.
This song was esp. touching performed the week after the Paris attacks.

Waiting To Be

Close your eyes, love

Oh my love, do you feel it?

Wafting silk-soft, an intangible weight

Waiting to be…

Close your eyes, can you see it?

Leaning bold, eager behind a barred gate

Close your eyes, love

Oh my love, do you taste it?

Steeping the silence with ravenous sigh

Teasing the air

Close your eyes, do you smell it?

Musky like autumn, dusty like July

Close your eyes, love,

Oh my love, can you reach it?

Gossamer spiral, phantom filigree

Tossed to Time’s tress,

Close your eyes, can you touch it?

Life in a poem still waiting to be

© Janet Martin

Sometimes, after writing a poem I close my eyes and let stillness run through my senses;
Listen,
reach,
taste,

...is that it, or is there another poem waiting to be?