Hind-sight

You took me where
I did not want to go
My cries filled the air
As I pleaded, ‘no’
Now, in hind-sight
I look at the end
This was the road
That led to a friend

J~

Genuine Compassion

We shake our heads and cluck our tongues
And ‘tsk-tsk’ over that and this
As ‘bad news’ makes its daily rounds
Beneath the guise of ‘no gossip’
The ‘did you hear?’ and ‘did you know’s?’
Becomes the fodder for the tongue
As fast and furious ‘bad news’ flows
And none are spared, not old nor young
But raised eye-brows and holy gasps
And verbal nuance clouds the air
As on and on the woes are passed
Of love’s misfortunes and despair
No longer private is the name
Of he who stumbled on life’s path
But in a public hall of shame
Looms penance in the gossip’s wrath
And woe to he who must endure
‘Pious compassion’ of the just
Mauling not what is good and pure
But agonies of man-kind’s lust…
…‘Let he who never yet hath sinned
Be the first to cast a stone’
Ten-thousand ‘should-haves’ cannot do
What one whispered prayer has done

Janet Martin

Morning Prayer

Open my mind, Lord
To feel every moment
Wide as an ocean
Let my visage be
Not in the seeing
But simply the knowing
That life is a footprint
In eternity


Open my eyes, Lord
And help me to feel it
A whisper of heaven
In every breath
Open my eyes, Lord
In moments reveal it
Without Your great mercy
My life would be death

Open my heart, Lord
Oh, let my vision
Not be deceived
By the world around me
Open my heart, Lord
Someday in your Kingdom
You will unveil
What these eyes cannot see

Janet Martin

October Rain Song

The dark reached long into the day
And earth could not persuade
The heavens to decline the gray
For summer’s warmer shade

The rain weeps in perpetual grief
Its tempo, high then low
Plucking the valiant autumn leaf
Into the river’s flow

The traffic hisses in the street
The wind rattles the doors
Beneath umbrellas, hurried feet
Hasten to work-place shores

The dark reached far across the hour
In desolate requiem
A dirge to every leaf and flow’r
As earth becomes a stream

Janet Martin

It was so dark at 8:00 a.m. when the kids got on the bus,
that I had to strain to see Victoria's rapidly fluttering hand
waving good-bye.

Awareness

There’s a consciousness in living
That endears life’s simple hours
And the secret of its treasure
Does not lie in mystic powers

There’s a consciousness in living
That keens both the heart and mind
To the gift within a moment
And the brevity of Time

There’s a consciousness in living
That makes sacred every breath
And enriches what we’re holding
It’s the consciousness of death

Janet Martin

Satisfied

When my head’s full of words
With a pen in my hand
When my Muse is stirred
In evening’s dark strand
When the sky laughs its colors
From lips of gray-blue
And I forget trouble
Distracted by you
When my heart’s full of dreaming
And my heads full of rhymes
And I break all the statutes
Of meter and time
And the words just keep pouring
From my fingertips
Like the sun in the morning
Or the smile on my lips
When I feel like flying
With two feet on the ground
And I hear you near me
In the night’s quiet sound
When the sorrow and sadness
Of life disappears
Wrapped in the music
Of an old poet’s tears
And I feel the warmth
Of your sigh on my skin
And I hear the longing
Of you on the wind
When seeing is nothing
And blindness is sight
As faith guides me onward
Through shadow and light
When paper and passion
And pleasure collide
To meet for a moment
In briefest delight
Then is the heartbeat
Of love’s tender bliss
The having and holding
Of what was and what is
As I hold your closer
And I draw you home
With nothing but paper
A pen and a poem

J~

Perfect

There’s nothing like love’s tender kisses
Warm against a cold, dark night
There’s nothing like a quickened heart-beat
In the softened candle-light
There’s nothing like intimate whispers
When the world lies fast asleep
There’s nothing like the quiet knowing
Promises were meant to keep

There’s nothing quite as truly lovely
As two people, lost in love
There’s nothing that is quite as lonely
As the thought of what once was
There’s nothing quite as pure and perfect
In this little walk of strife
Than finding ‘mongst the countless masses
A soul mate to share your life

J~

Summer Heart

Sometimes, on nights like tonight
In the rain, no longer a warm splatter of kisses
But a mass of hissing serpents
Lashing 'gainst my window-pane,
I find myself unable
To teach my heart simple words
Like good-bye, letting go or trust

Sometimes, on nights like tonight
As daylight dissolves an hour too soon
In dark blue fingers of twilight
Raking across the weeping sky
I find myself
Reaching into the wet darkness
Against the obvious

Sometimes, on nights like tonight
As reasoning unravels without constraint
In echoes of desperation
Across the deepening farewell
I find myself
Returning to the moment
Of having and holding and us

J~