Blue...

To write away sorrow

And missing you

Are more than a pen

Is able to do

To smooth from my mind

Your eyes and your lips

Are tasks far too heavy

For mere fingertips

What, oh what is a girl to do

When all she is can think about

Is blue?

To drain from my longing

The sound of your laugh

Is like pouring the ocean

Into a glass

The spirit is willing

The flesh is weak

I cradle your memory

Against my cheek

What, oh what is a girl to do

When all she is able to be

Is blue?

Moments compile

Like they don’t even care

That history expands

Twixt my ‘here’ and your ‘there’

To dance with a memory

Is bittersweet bliss

But it isn't the same

Without your kiss

Blue, blue, blue,

What, oh what is a girl to do

When all she is able to touch

Is blue?

© Janet Martin

Heart-thief

It is not a swift wrenching from my grasp

Or my chest

As you steal my heart

No.

It is a patient sort of tender anguish

Probing,

Pondering

Sweet and slow,

It is rendered in sudden

Intake of breath

A smile

A tear

A sigh

It trembles beneath me

Deep in the earth

As I look into your eyes

For I know full well

That parting lurks

Somewhere, in quiet wait

I hear it in the creaking

Of the rusty garden gate

And how your step

Falls heavier

Than when you were a lad

It makes me fully happy

And oh,

So fully sad

To know that you are stealing

With my blessing

Part by part

The deep

Innermost lining

Of your

Mother’s

Heart

© Janet Martin 

We attended our son's grade Eight graduation ceremony today.

What a great bunch of kids. 

What a beautiful age...

What Could it Be?

It spills across the darkness from restored horizon lines

It fills the morning and the noon and night

It teases from the humble bud the bloom, the autumn wine

It weaves its apprehension and delight

Across its span of gathered hours, it wanders; leaps and flies

It strips the garden path of flowers and taunts our hungry eyes

It tugs a breath, an hour, a day into its firm embrace

It tugs the precious baby from our arms

It ravishes with smiles and tears love’s ever-changing face

And stuns us with its sweet and simple charms

And for a while it may deceive us into thinking it will last

Before we turn to see the long blue shadow it has cast

What is this wrenching overture that pleads and bleeds and weeps?

What tunes our passions like the days of grass?

Where are its hidden pulses throbbing from galactic deeps?

To wink at seasons in its hour-glass

What is this tender melody of bitter-sweetest rhyme?

Why it is simply this; the subtle brevity of time

© Janet Martin

Redeeming Moments

We hold within each moment

A brief and twinkling span

Yet, we ought to redeem it

As wisely as we can

For moments linked together

Form more than ethereal ties

But prove, as we redeem them

Where our true love lies

© Janet Martin

Be very careful, then, how you live —not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.  Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.  Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephes. 5:15-20

Beneath it All...

  

Poetic Blooms posted this picture prompt

When I complain

Then in a way

It is the same

As if I’d say

That I should be

The one to hold

The ball of green

And blue and gold

God, forgive me

When I pine

To know Your hand

Is over mine

Bestows a peace

Word cannot tell

Your Hand beneath

God, all is well

When I complain

Tis but to say

That God should plan

His way my way

God, I’m so glad

You know it all

And it’s Your Hand

Beneath the ball

© Janet Martin

It is Ours to Dance...

Poetic Bloomings challenges us to write a villanelle

The villanelle is 19-line poem consisting of 5 tercets and a final quatrain. It requires no set meter, nor number of syllables per line. It carries a pattern of only two rhyme sounds (ABA in 5 tercets, and then ABAA in final quatrain). The first and third lines of the first tercet repeat alternately as a refrain closing the succeeding stanzas, and rejoin as the final couplet of the quatrain.

A Villanelle

We cannot choose our sunshine or our rain

Its fusion orchestrated by love’s most perfect Hand

It is ours to dance; lest heaven plays its melody in vain

To crave a minuet of past refrain

Is but to miss the chorus He has planned

We cannot choose our sunshine or our rain

He tunes Time’s dulcimer; its temporal strain

Touched by One whose thought we cannot understand

It is ours to dance; lest heaven’s plays its melody in vain

Now high, now low, the harmony of pleasure and of pain

Sweeps soulfully across the sea and land

We cannot choose our sunshine or our rain

It is not ours to object His choice refrain

The Maestro of life’s orchestra directs His precious band

It is ours to dance lest heaven plays its melody in vain

Too soon the music fades from earthbound plain

It is not ours to know the why or understand

We cannot choose our sunshine or our rain

It is ours to dance; lest heaven plays its melody in vain

© Janet Martin

A Door Wide Open...

The day recedes into the past

As night inhales its waning gleam

And into Time’s depleting stream

Our little deeds of day are cast

The miles and smiles of centuries

Stretch silently within the wake

Of moments; for we cannot take

From it but this; its memories

How still the rush of bleeding hours

How kind and cruel its ruthless flow

For none can see where moments go

So I must pause and smell the flowers

And I must pause to see the corn

A silver sea in noon-day heat

The laughter of a child is sweet

As on the breeze its lilt is borne

And as the dark curls o’er the day

And as the twilight curtain drops

Time does not slow and only stops

When it is far too late to say…

I wish that I had paused far more

To hold a child upon my knee

And listen long and willingly

Before the closing of its door

© Janet Martin

Perfectly Placed

Placed softly

beneath our stumbling feet

not because we

deserve it

but because He

loves us…

A brand new day of grace

Placed kindly

before our pleading gaze

not because we earned it

but because He

forgives…

A brand new day of grace

Placed tenderly

over our trampled past

not because we

want it

but because we need it…

A brand new day of grace

© Janet Martin