Because It Is Friday

Because it’s Friday

I will be seduced

By the long moment stretching

Beyond the window-pane

Where somewhere

Your feet

Are finding the trails

Ever leading

Home

Because it is Friday

I allow your whisper

To draw me from rigid details

Just to languish frivolously

In the rushing thought

Of your fingers

Rousing possibility

As unpolished stutters

Murmur a wanton

Reply

Because it is Friday

I will not dissuade

Tattered intentions

From washing up on unseen shores

Because it is Friday

And somewhere

In life’s trampled grasses

Hearts soar

Because it is Friday

Once more

© Janet Martin

Contemplating Moments from the Bank of a Brook

They hover momentarily

Infinite breaths of possibility

Before slipping over the edge

Joining the rush of weightless centuries

Past

Inexperience begins its lessons

In a fresh generation

Of eager-eyed adolescence

Greedy with desire to experience

Life

…and all I am able to do

Is marvel at our ability

To repeat its bitter mistakes

Even with history’s mirror of

Consequence

© Janet Martin

Manifold Mystery

What is the loveliness

You keep on your lips?

What scenes lay behind your closed eyes?

What do you ache for

In clenched finger-tips

What tunes your unspoken cries?

What draws your laughter?

What stirs your soul?

What weeps from inclines above?

What spawns the longing

That curses this world

Oh, do you think it is love?

***

What causes Him

To grant one more day

To a thankless and erring race?

What shapes His patience

Toward rebel-slaves

Addicted to sin’s vile disgrace

What tunes the mercy

That wakens the dawn?

What stirs His might from above?

What fills the vastness

Of centuries gone?

Oh, do you think it is love?

***

What forms desire?

Or then what fulfills it?

What is this double-edged sword?

What inflicts a wound?

But oh, then what heals it?

What is both race and reward?

What rends the heart

Like a lightning bolt

And yet is gentle as a dove?

What is this

Manifold mystery?

Oh, do you think it is love?

© Janet Martin

What is the loveliness

You keep on your lips?

What scenes lay behind your closed eyes?

What do you ache for

In clenched finger-tips

What tunes your unspoken cries?

What draws your laughter?

What stirs your soul?

What weeps from inclines above?

Beyond the longing

That curses this world

Oh, do you think it is love?

***

What causes Him

To grant one more day

To a thankless and erring race?

What shapes His patience

Toward rebel-slaves

Addicted to sin’s vile disgrace

What tunes the mercy

That wakens the dawn?

What stirs His might from above?

What fills the vastness

Of centuries gone?

Oh, do you think it is love?

But You Stayed...

…but you stayed

All soft and warm against me

In the promises we made

While Time and distance

Spread their ware

you stayed

against me in a prayer

J~

Beneath Winter's Flaxen Moon

We walk the frost-tipped eventide

On aisles of snow-bent grass

And crooked trees stretch shameless; wide

Their naked wantonness

The low moon falls against the lawn

Where frozen puddles lie

As twilight deepens its blue yawn

Inhaling remnant sky

It fans its thoughts on deadened air

And bends the earth into a prayer

Your breath is summer on my skin

Your fingertips, a hearth

Your lips, shaped in a soft half-grin

Bring heaven-thoughts to earth

The disrobed trees in clumsy truth

Our hidden wants descry

You take my longing in your mouth

And peel away the sky

The moon its subtle vesture spills

In silver blankets on the hills

The wind, a drifting troubadour

Croons a slow melody

It sweeps across night’s gleaming floor

In gallant chivalry

The little breadth of toil and tears

That stole away the noon

Dissolves like hazy yester-years

Beneath the flaxen moon

But we are not aware of things

As beggars taste the wine of kings

J~

Sun-down...

All day it hung
A polished orb
In heights of azure mirth
Til swiftly
and so silently
it fell beneath the earth
A fire-ball
of burnished orange
yet without much ado
it simply slipped
behind the woods
soundlessly out of view
All that it forgot to take
was a pink and purple lake...

Janet~

I intentionally waited to go for my run until sun-down.
I'm glad I did. The sun fell away in minutes
leaving a pink and gold wash in the atmosphere
before the blue twilight stole it away.