Mr. January

Mr January marches across the world leaving second-look wonder in his white-footed wake...

(this is the kind of weather I love to challenge with hot chocolate and cross-country skis, but for now

I am a little unhappily housebound with a heavy head-cold:( 

so I must content myself with from-the-house-shots...and hot tea

He walks in socks white-woolly

Icy kisses splice his jowls

He blusters like a bully

As he musters frigid howls

He tests best optimism

With regales of snow-sleet-hail

Fair weather feels forgotten

In the tether of his gale

He torments trees, his garment

Wrangles, tangles stark-still bark

He wails through gardens dormant

And roars through the hoary dark

He makes the maiden shiver

His fingers are deathly cold

He strakes landscapes with silver

And breaks skylines with crushed gold

He shakes the clouds; their plunder

Covers earth with downy deeps

He wakes a wanton wonder

In hearts hungry for green sweeps

While stunning us with pictures

That no earth-artist could paint

The palette of his tinctures

Fit for heaven’s fittest saint

He lavishes limp laughter

With longing and gratitude

For there will be an After

After his gust is subdued

© Janet Martin

January Jasmine

It sweeps across the deeps of spring

And dross of autumn’s frill

It keeps the seed a cradled Thing

While winter wields its will

White, white its stillness of the night

White gold its cold, cold morn

White crystal noon, blue-white twilight

White broods on woods leaf-lorn

Each window is a picture frame

As heaven spills its stars

Where Masterpieces without name

Are ladled from cloud-jars

The Best and Worst of earth immersed

In perfect purity

The sweat of farmers reimbursed

With fireside luxury

…and home is sweeter, is it not

Than in June’s green-spun tide

Where porch and kitchen-beacons dot

Earth’s spotless countryside

…as January’s jasmine spills

A sparkling-starlet sea

To rooftop-gardens, fields and hills

In wordless poetry

© Janet Martin

 Recently the clouds keep dropping heap upon heap of these January 'blooms'...

My personal challenge was to write a January poem without using the word 'snow':)

Time's Free Way

Don’t you love a new day?

Shiny with ‘perhaps’

Time’s fresh-polished freeway

Landing in our laps

Rife with hope and wonder

Mercy lights the sky

Pours from coral yonder

Life’s refurbished ‘try’

Velvet invitation

Dares the heart to dream

Heaven’s salutation

Utters love’s esteem

Gone, the grunt and foible

Of past noble quest

Heaven sets earth’s table

With its utter-best

...a perfectly new day

Possibility

Runs rampant, a free way 

To what waits to be

© Janet Martin

Imagine if we had to pay for a new day...

the old day wouldn't end until we could afford the toll for a new one!

God's goodness ordained it so this isn't the case.

from Rilla of Ingleside

Parade of Hours

Ephemeral, the staid parade of hours

A fleeting flit of poetry and prayer

Of white-capped field betwixt its yield of flow’rs

Of bones learning to bear time’s groan of air

While day breaks through the dark with ether gold

And spills to vaults a treasure none can hold

…but folds, as moments march, morning to noon

And noon to twilight whispers of goodnight

Ephemeral, both emerald of June

And boreal bestowal, silver-white

Sealing beneath iced steel, brook-melodies

Which mercy’s staid parade of hours frees

Winter’s frigid warfare will not abide

It too, falls prey to the parade of hours

And earth, wearing the color of a bride

Will soon birth darling dream-lands full of flow’rs

Meanwhile, we smile through bookish escapades

Of fireside adventures, page on page

Time’s beckoning becomes reckoning, swift

The Thing That Is fades to The Thing That Was

This stayed parade of hours is a gift

Not to be taken lightly; without pause

The law of tick and tock turns days to years

 Where everything that is soon disappears

© Janet Martin

Parade of Hours #2

(short version)

Look, there a baby

Ah, look, there summer's rose

Look, there a woman

Ah, look, there winter's snows

Life's Smallest Things...

*thank-you, Sasha:)

(This morning the sun reflected off of something that created the illusion of two suns rising)

This small bundle has produced more happiness than is possible to pen:)

It seems to be life’s smallest things

Which bring the biggest happiness

And makes us feel like common kings

Beneath the thrill of its caress

The pages of spent age are filled

With testaments of kind delight

Where journeymen of time are stilled

By miracles of sound and sight

  Dew-drops, a baby’s cry, a bird

*A word penned and mailed from afar

Snow, like pearl-dust by small feet stirred

Black night studded with specks of star

A smile, a little girl or boy

A book, brook-song silver and blue

And from the well-spring of grief-joy

Love’s smallest proof, a tear or two

A window full of fresh-born day

Arms full of newborn babe, oh my

The blossom bud unfolding May

Small leaf strumming pink twilight sky

...a cup of tea, rain-melody

Laughter love-spawned, a piece of bread

A garden gate, an apple tree 

A muffin with gold butter spread

Fences drowning in flowers, wild

And free to all who wander there

To wonder like a looking child

At mercy’s marbled thoroughfare

…impossible to tell them all

Or try to spell the thankfulness

For something that seems oh, so small

Yet hold life’s biggest happiness

© Janet Martin

Wishing you a day of small-shaped wonders!

Happy Saturday!