Insatiable Appetite

Words feed the poem in me

For a little while

I am satisfied

But then,

As one starving

I attack them

With renewed hunger

For a poem

Is never

Completely

Filled

© Janet Martin

Invisible Alignment

When dim-lit eve turns up the dark

And rain, like tiny elfin-feet

Trips lightly on the onyx pane

That by noon’s light, frames bustling streets

…when this small day undaunted slips

Into a vault I cannot see

And Time exhales from ageless lips

Another little day for me

I pause, both grateful and afraid

For while Time gives it also steals

One hand conceals a two-edged blade

While with the other hand it heals

And I, with one hand holding fast

Allow the other to let go

As dim-lit eve turns up the dark

I hold love close, yet miss it so…

J~

On Writing...

Writing is  

Bittersweet frustration

A journey

Without a destination

To write is like climbing

A long, slow grade

But its summit is obscured in a mist

Curiosity

Keeps us pressing on

To a view that may not even exist

It is child’s freckles

And dimpled grin

A punch in the gut

Or under the chin

It’s a stroll

On periwinkle eve of June

Its hand to the pen

In a world out of tune

It is the hideout

Of phantom Muse

The lord to which

Thought pays its dues

© Janet

To Everything There is a Time...

Summer is a season of many loves for me...posts may be fewer.

To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. Eccles. 3:1

What is June?

What is June?

June is a ribbon of coral and gold

Brushing the skyline while it is still night

June is maiden so youthful and bold

Flouncing her ringlets in girlish delight

She shakes out her skirts and rampantly spills

Wild-flower gardens over hollow and hill

What is June?

June is a door standing slightly ajar

To glimmer of turquoise and sea-polished shores

She is the threshold we seek from afar

As winter and spring trip across earthen floors

The cry of the gull and the trill of the lark

The song of the robin while it is still dark

What is June?

She is hands outstretched, sweetly running over

With peony, lupine, with daisy and rose

She is a soul-mate, a beautiful lover

Stirring our passion and holding us close

In vast, emerald tides her melody sweeps

Out to the eyes of azure-blue deeps

What is June?

She is a year’s darling; the middle child

The gleaming gem twixt spring and fall

Composer, as her Muse runs wild

Of summer’s haunting madrigal

Whilst from her radiant fingertips

A little glimpse of Heaven slips

© Janet Martin

Thursday Thoughts~

There is a war

Intense, hid from sight

It is the battle

Twixt wrong and right

Fear the day

Should its conflict cease

As numbed discernment

Brings an illusion of peace

There is a tug-of-war

In love’s two-toned beauty

The urge of desire

And dictation of duty

A long line of laundry

Is a testament

To a long line of love

No man can serve two masters

The servant makes his choice

No words are needed because action

Carries a definite voice

Dream, but only a little

It polishes the mundane

The line is fine twixt little and much

And to dream too much is vain

Dream, but only a little

Don’t let it mess with your head

Lest you stand and stare into the thin air

While someone else butters your bread

Hurry, hurry; don’t be late

Hell

And heaven

Do not wait

Spare change

Changes lives

On some days we…

…Live, laugh, love and play

On others we

…Weep, wish, work, pray

This must be my Muse’s queue

A list with many jobs to do

Never yet has darkness set in

Permanently

He who hath no shadows

Hath no light

Janet~

Why I Write...

I never can explain it quite

This need, it seems I have, to write…

But paper is a patient ear

No words are writ, it will not hear

It never assumes what is not

But simply listens to my thought

Here life's pleasures and sorrows spill

In whispers from a poet’s quill

I write to preserve moments past

Knowing ink’s measure will outlast

This transient, ephemeral shell

I write, for there is much to tell

But time is short and listeners rare

And spoken word is soon dead air

Thus I must write; a diary

Of thought engraved in poetry

I write because I love to read

To feel the passion mortal’s bleed

To thrill beneath their ageless thought

The mark of quill on parchment wrought

Of Tennyson, Longfellow, Frost

And countless throngs of voices lost

Had they not taken time to bare

With ink, the thoughts they longed to share

Tis no small thing to hold a pen

And spill heart-linings out to men

Of hope, of longing; these we summon

For mankind has this much in common

And with the written word we trace

The heartbeat of the human race

Manifested on a stage

In filament of ink and page

 

Tis no small thing; reaching to God

Seeking Him within my thought

Tis no small thing to contemplate

What to write; what to erase

…to paint in whispered ethereal art

Upon canvases of the heart

An earnest, resolute vocation

Generation to generation

…and so I write, not to become

A famous author, world-renowned

I write to touch the low-flung cloud

Or lonely souls lost in life’s crowd

I write; for it seems I cannot

Quell the vast ocean in my thought

And I am glad, so glad indeed

That others write, so I can read

© Janet Martin

My Homework for Writer's Unite is done!
Assignment: 200-300 words on Why I Write

Word Count;300 (phew!)

What are you doing? hubby asked a few nights ago when he called
I'm reading Treasure Valley, I replied. It was written in 1908 by Canadian author, Marian Keith.
Thank-you Marian,(although you were gone before I was born) for writing and sharing your beautiful, timeless perspective.

The Mind of a Poem

They tell me how I should write them

The rules to rhythm and rhyme

But they fall from my quill

By their own free will

Regardless of meter and time

They tell me how I should form them

Can I shape a river’s fray?

For a poet’s need

Is to sit down and bleed

Let the drops fall where they may

They tell me how I should mold them

But rules never could sway a poem

In the still of the night

As I sit here and write

Words have a mind of their own

© Janet Martin