Soul-Song

The silence holds an orchestra; its Maestro is our thought

And oh, the tender beauty of its soft, soulful requiem

Fills with an earnest solace the vast void of what is not

And lights the wick that once burned wildly with a daring dream

The sinister employment of our dubious tendencies

Dissolves upon the lilting notes of effervescent cheer

Be gone regret, and all its suffocating memories

The music of this silence weeps a sweeter sort of tear

…it will not pause to flounder in the dismal darkness where

We grapple with the conflict of desire and despair

This Maestro does not paint its smile with pretense or disguise

The measure of its tempo wraps us in love’s true embrace

No digital enhancements, no lip-syncing and no lies

For Thought is the discerner of the man behind the face

And oh, the sweet redemption that we seek for being us

And oh, the fervent longing to be heard and understood

At last spills free into a silence filled with what once was

But is no more; for Thought convicts where no man would or could

My failure and regret would be far more than I could bear

Forgiveness not for others, but for self ignites a tear

…the silence is not shattered as it falls upon my cheek

The Maestro gently nods but does not seek to quell its flow

A melody of grace-proportion fills unfathomed deeps

Its cadence fills the vault from whence the timeless night-winds blow

As mercy not ordained by what mortality deems fit

But from the One that tunes the Maestro in its rendering

Absolves me from a reckoning that flesh cannot acquit

And only in the utterance of full surrendering

Can I at last descry the melody that tunes the soul

As Maestro yields its baton to the One that makes us whole

© Janet Martin

Heaven's Disguised Kisses

Sometimes this...

Does not feel
like heaven's kiss...
...but it is.

'I found myself restraining a great big Monday morning sigh

As its relentless repetition at first glance, held no appeal

But as I studied it more fully suddenly I realize

Heaven-glimpses on earth are real

Mom; aka Janet

A few minutes ago...

Mom: Melissa, please go and tidy your room.

Melissa: Didn't I just do that?

Mom: I wouldn't know...

Sweet, Sweet New Day...

 Today she is modestly clad in frigid gray...

Sweet, sweet new day, what have we done

That you should thus return

With offerings of patient love

Which far too oft we spurn?

Sweet, sweet new day, what do you hold

Within your mystery?

What waits concealed within the folds

Soon shaping history?

Sweet, sweet new day, pure, pristine path

Soon your robe will be rent

Its hem stained with the aftermath

Of pride and passion spent

Sweet, sweet new day, we don’t deserve

Your kind, gracious embrace

Your predecessors bear witness

Of our sad disgrace

…yet with compassion you entrust

Your moments to our care

While we, pilgrim’s of humble dust

Your joy and sorrow bear

Sweet, sweet new day, humbly I pray

You do not come in vain

Sweet, sweet new day, for you will never

Pass this way again

© Janet Martin

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Ps.118:24

Refurbished Hope

 (some photos of 'her face' in the past week)

I never tire of your face

From dark folds you emerge

A newborn gathering of grace

Pure, virgin moment-surge

Somehow twixt farewell and hello

You shed your haggard stance

Where steps disheartened, weary, slow

Yearn now to leap and dance

Your form, refreshed and darkness-bathed

Exhales replenished mirth

Your labyrinth of yesterdays

Cannot return to earth

From charcoal cocoon your emerge

Draping the sunless slope

With tender mercy’s rampant splurge

And dawn’s refurbished hope

© Janet Martin

So often it amazes me, how the old becomes new in the morning.

What our mothers said is true, 'it always looks better in the morning'.

Fishing For Answers

PROMPT #90. Ekphrastic Poetry – 2013 Photo Prompt #1

By Poetic Bloomings

If you had not left

then perhaps I would hear

more than the whisper

of time disappear

and I would hear gladly

those feet in the park

instead of standing

here sadly

fishing

in the dark

If you had not left

would the tide cease its crying?

would gray day

not murmur

the color of dying?

If you were still here

to cast, next to me

your beautful dream

would the sun

shine suddenly?

 ...or will this river swell

with the gathering of tears,

 of birch-leaf and moments

lost in yester-years?

If you had not left

would we fish together

and would every day

be

perfect weather?

Janet Martin~ 

*Photo credit: Keith R. Good.(Photos by Keith Good Facebook Community Page)

Poetry, Waiting to be Written

 (This morning it is gray rain-poetry; see below, so I chose a photo from earlier this week)

The dawn is imbibed with expectation

And diminishing deep

We are drunk with the elation

Wrought by sleep

As footsteps dash,

They slip and splash

Into its gilded room

The earth, a palace

We, the kings and queens

Of mercy’s bloom

To wish and dream another day

To live and laugh

And love and pray

And bear the virtue of its sway

Until Time’s bending tide

Breaks on the cove of twilight’s shore

And it is gone forevermore

Into the ditch with days of yore

Blessing and burden lie

Poetry flickers in each precious tick

Mortality trembles; a flame on life’s wick

Janet~

Rain-poetry; this NOT what our typical mid-January looks like.

 

Sunday Whirl: #91

 

Sacred Charge

 

We cannot put it down and walk away

For this is not a novel or a bloom

Plucked as we see the birthing of a day

Bursting in radiance on earth’s living-room

To render its allowances of grace

Before night seals its mien to memory

No, no, the tender honor we embrace

Remains; from now until eternity

As we behold, in awe-struck reverence

The magnitude of its deliverance

We suffer through its valley of travail

And then, as heaven draws its gate ajar

Lending to humble arms, in infant wail

The wonderment of things holy and far

We thus accept, not gifts of trivial worth

To treasure or dispose of as we choose

But, from the hands of God to lowly earth

He sends a charge that we cannot refuse

Of uttermost importance from above

A miracle of hope and life and love

This divine dispensation of His joy

Is staggering and sweet beyond compare

From this day forth the moments we employ

Have been transformed to bear life’s dearest care

And we will never be the same again

As we accept our heaven-tenured lot

Life’s fondest pleasure is love’s deepest pain

To teach a child is to by God be taught

This sacred charge is unlike any other

A newborn cries and we become…

A mother

© Janet Martin

Sometimes the tender brief, yet eternal magnitude of it all steals my breath...there is no quitting, no dismissal from this bitter-sweetest charge.

Of Hastening Hours...an edited re-post

 (I took this photo the other day; stubble-art)

Far too soon the lily sleeps
Beneath frost-gilded kiss
Where far too soon the red limb weeps
Her robe of summer's bliss
And far too soon blue shadows lie
Across the musky leaf
As Augusts’ burnished breezes die  
Like laughter tasting grief

Far too soon the autumn glow

Is snuffed 'neath winter’s shroud
Where nature’s garnered grudges blow
From darkened, bully-cloud
But just as summertime and fall
Must yield to winter’s will
Soon, soon we hear the robin's call
As spring sweeps o’er the hill

Far too soon the seasons come
And far too soon they rest
Far too soon my little home
Will be an empty nest
As far too soon the green and gold
Lies withered on the grass
And far too soon I’m getting old
As quickened seasons pass

© Janet Martin