Cart-wheels in the Sky (edited re-post)

Poetics Aside Prompt:  Write a “Wheel” poem: of fortune, ferris, bike, auto – any kind of wheel. Even a big wheel and wheeling and dealing will do.

Dear little child, you don’t know it yet

A moment to you is simply a breath

A necessary means

To reach The Beckoning ahead

Moments spiral and gleam

A subtly disguised requiem

Wheeling through your thought

To the melody of a dream

You do not hear the rush

Of time moan in the autumn hush

Pushing to an ever-expanding hollow

Disguised by living’s underbrush

   Reels of pleasure and pain

Glimmer through Time’s ephemeral vein

Children become women and men

In its rising-falling refrain

Run, dear little child, run

Your intangible deliverance has begun

Into the vexing arms of life

And the jaws of the waning sun

Nay fly, dear little child, I say fly

Cart-wheel on clouds in a neon sky

Lest your Moment deflates

And your dream-well runs dry

© Janet Martin

Awesome Artist

He sweeps a dripping brush across the sky

Soundless, beyond the silhouette of trees

The artist spills celestial ecstasies

 Of pink and coral blush, translucent dye

Perplexities and pining ease their grip
 With gentle strokes in heaven-hallowed calm

He feather’s harsher edges with his palm

Beneath twilight’s tender companion-ship

In benediction of purple and blue
 The artist dips his brush into a wash

And flings into the hush a starry sash

Daubing the vivid sky-line from our view

Painter of heaven’s ceaseless canopy

Cool darkness snuffs the burnished tree-lined slope

The Artist fills the endless sky with hope

 In master-pieces of His majesty

...and in the tender twilight growing dim
The Artist reveals but whispers of Him

© Janet Martin

 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Psalms 19:1

(approx. an hour before the sun set I looked up to notice a strange rain-bow tinted blitz in the sky.)

 

The Most Important Day of my Life

Poetic Bloomings Prompt: The Most Important Day of My Life...

...when I said ‘I do’

Blissfully unaware

Of life’s conniving stare

Its concrete walls and hurdles

Because my eyes were fixed on you

When I said ‘I do’

Certain that love

Would be enough

Come hell or higher water

To carry us through

When I said ‘I do’

Hell and high water

Seethed; primed for slaughter

But I guess they forgot

You said, ‘I do’ too

Lord, when I said ‘I do’ to You

My lesser yet equally cherished vows

Are possible to keep, though life blows

It vilest gale from unknowns deep

Love will be enough to see us through

© Janet Martin

 

How To Love Your Teen-age Child

Poetics Aside Prompt: Take the phrase “How to (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

How to love your teen-age child;

with much kindness and patience

How to acquire much kindness and patience;

with much pleading in prayer

How to inspire much pleading in prayer;

love your  * teen-ager

© Janet Martin

* a little history on the 'teen-ager'.

 

A Poet is Born

Today 

an older poet's

out-pouring

of passion, fear

love or longing

will ignite

the spark

for she,

A virgin poet

pressing

passion, fear, 

longing

and love

into

her

first poem

...and a poet is born

© Janet Martin

November...a parody in response to the poem September

Poetic Bloomings invites us to attempt a Parody: Simply put, a parody poem is one that pokes fun at another poem or poet. It could “mock” a song lyric (which is basically musical poetry). It can draw inspiration to answer another work. Everything is fair game; the more irreverent, the funnier (or more pointed) it will be.

Mine is really just a response to the poem September by: Helen Hunt Jackson (it always bothered me that she did not share her 'secret' about that day. So, I am sharing November's secret.

The golden rod is brown now

The corn is in its bin

The trees in apple orchards

Are stripped of rosy grin

The gentians bluest fringes

Are shriveled, brittle fray

In broken pods the milkweed

Has flung its silk away

The sedges spill their harvest

In stilted meadow-nook

And asters by the brook-side

Have dropped into the brook

From frosted lanes of morning

The children’s breath-clouds rise

The ditch is all a-flutter

With birch-leaf butter-flies

By all these gilded tokens

November days are here

With autumn’s dismal weather

And autumn’s sullen tear

But none of this gray tinting

Which makes November drear

Can dim November’s hinting

Of Christmas drawing near

And I will share my secret

Of dull November’s guile

For soon it will be Christmas

And that is why I smile

© Janet Martin

September

by Helen Hunt Jackson

  THE golden-rod is yellow;
        The corn is turning brown;
    The trees in apple orchards
        With fruit are bending down.

    The gentian's bluest fringes
        Are curling in the sun;
    In dusty pods the milkweed
        Its hidden silk has spun.

    The sedges flaunt their harvest,
        In every meadow nook;
    And asters by the brook-side
        Make asters in the brook,

    From dewy lanes at morning
        The grapes' sweet odors rise;
    At noon the roads all flutter
        With yellow butterflies.

    By all these lovely tokens
        September days are here,
    With summer's best of weather,
        And autumn's best of cheer.

    But none of all this beauty
        Which floods the earth and air
    Is unto me the secret
        Which makes September fair.

    'T is a thing which I remember;
        To name it thrills me yet:
    One day of one September
        I never can forget.

Of Desire...

Of all the trinkets tossed near to tempt me

I desire but one thing…

…my lips burning with the need to shape these words

I love you, darling

Of all the beguiling boasts that others promenade

I do not covet; but this

My lips burning with the desire just to taste

Your kiss

Of all the public confessions and professions glibly spouted

I care not

My lips burn with the desire, provoked privately and intensely

By your thought

© Janet Martin

A Song of Gratitude

This is not just some little old forgotten pond in the middle of the woods...this is His glorious handiwork!

Our wanton lips can never shape Your praise

Without a heart of humble gratitude

And oh, our waning spirit is renewed

As we ponder the goodness of Your ways

Will we be silent so the stones cry out?

Dare we to disregard Love’s Royal Hand?

As seasons deck with wonderment the land

Will we insist Your graciousness to doubt?

How can our feeble visage understand?

The seed of sin and its vile consequence

Afflicts us; yet as its onslaught torments

It cannot thwart the mercy of Your hand

Your grace and faithfulness oh God, amaze

Your holiness exceeds unfathomed deeps

Yet still Your kind and tender mercy keeps

Our floundering sentiments of stuttered praise

With love the dormant fallow is imbued

In stunning gifts of boundless mystery

You fill the sod, the heavens and the sea

We lift our song in awe-filled gratitude

© Janet Martin