Saturday, February 9, 2013

I Love Blue





I love blue
Cerulean sky
Noon-day sea
The light in your eye
When you think of me

Janet~

Suddenly winter feels a whole LOT like...winter:)
Suddenly thought drifts to things like the song of surf sweeping sand.

I Love Pink





I love pink
The glow of winter
Kissing the cheeks
Of a little girl
All carefree and giddy
As we splash and play
In a white-washed winter-world

Janet~

She lasted longer than I did out in the cold. Suddenly from the door I heard her call 'Mom, help! I''m literally frozen!' Her ponytail had frozen to her scarf and hat, a tangled mess! She screeched and howled as I tried to separate hair from snow and yarn:)


I Love Mornings





I love mornings
You just can’t get that feeling
Any other time of day
The newness of God’s grace-gift
In sun-sparkles, slips away

Janet~ 

'I love mornings' I said to Melissa while we enjoyed being the only two up for a little while.

Before the Poems...





Already then, I knew
That there was something more
To life than what we see on skin
Of moments as they pour

How else could walnut-leaf
Etched bold on cobalt sky
Kissed gold in late-day sultry sun
Hurt me so perfectly?

And how could babbling brook
Evoke, without a word
Irrevocable bliss-song
Within its silver splurge

Or how could jaunty breeze
Drunk on clover-pink bloom
Invite this little me to dance
In nature’s grand ball-room

…or this; weeping of wind
Drifting lost; aimlessly
Through winter’s stricken woodlot
Where a leaf-song used to be

…soft purple-misted dawn
Heady with dazzling dreams
Of summer-splashing recklessly
Through merry moment-streams

Already then I knew
When I was but a child
Something unwritten beckoned
In the air, driving me wild

© Janet Martin


When I was a child, on Saturday mornings before we were old enough to help, we were 'shooed' from the kitchen so Mother could give it it's weekly floor-scrub and wax. Those mornings sometimes seemed to last eternally, esp. in the cold winter when I didn't feel like waiting in the barn. But then I would 'traipse' all over the place. Some of those memories are etched in my mind. This morning suddenly I recalled standing in a woodlot, wondering what made it so different in the winter...ah, yes! the silence. This woodlot is mostly cleared away now, but it was there I fell in love; with violets, lilacs, apple-blossoms, forget-me-not and sun-dappled green. At our creek I discovered the thrill of brook-song; I can hear it still. Thank-you Mom:) and God.





Friday, February 8, 2013

The Way Life Goes





Sunlight-sparkle on the snow
That’s the way a life can go
Little ripple in a brook
Paragraph in time’s vast book

Little kiss and little love
Soon we fly to arms above
Like a petal on the breeze
Life; a wisp of memories

Half-breath whisper in our ear
So a life can disappear
Fragments slipping through our clasp
Gossamer we cannot grasp

Little you and little me
Pause before eternity
God is great and God is good
Help us live life as we should

© Janet Martin

Daydream Defiance





Here I will sit to revel a bit
In stubborn defiance
Will fill the chill in a purple-blue thrill
Drenching my thought
With sweet summer-requiem

Here on this bench fond memories drench
Winter’s bold bluff
With sunflower guile
While ice-petal wrath sweeps my garden path
I hear the echo
Of bare feet and I smile

© Janet Martin

Only Love




What conquers evil, quenches hate?
What pales infinity above,
Beneath us, all around
Only one thing
Only love

What fights and wins with tenderness
And never fails in spite of us?
What exceeds thoughts circumference?
Only one thing
Only love

What is this thing of blood and dirt?
Unglamorous, its splattered glove
Yet yields a precious, perfect hurt?
Only one thing,
Only love

What fills lust’s futile wantonness
With promises of pain and grief?
What melts the cold and calloused heart
Dissolving chains of unbelief?

What is this thing whereby we die
Suffering its cross to prove
We cannot ever fully live
Without it; one thing
Only love

© Janet Martin


 What spurs the gardener to prune the rose
Or the farmer to till his field?
Love bears the pain because it shows
Not then, but in the yield







Of Storm-song and Promise





Darkness relents; day’s argent surf rolls mute
Out to the melded fringe of land and sky
Where none its austere anthem can refute
As gales shiver our summer dreams awry
Beyond the window, frigid fathoms seethe
Parting ice lips in cold and cheerless mirth
Yet none restrains the potent pulse beneath
Of life held in the womb of mother earth
Where delicate wild anemone still sleeps
Forget-me-not and violet whisper quenched
Before the fragrant, purple river sweeps
Across the emerald vale of spring unclenched
Earth’s frozen scrim of winter-white is kissed
With visions of frothed pink and amethyst

Beyond the dappled pane we hunch to brace
The tides lashing our pallid skiff of skin
Clinging to promises of golden grace
Clad in a dashing zephyr’s welcome grin
Then, watch the screaming, scowling felon wilt
His rival threatens not with bully roar
But challenges with bits of sunshine spilt
In puddles warm against earth’s south-faced shore
Before it spreads, virile and ravishing
Across the plain, over hollow and hill
Melting beneath its lovely lavishing
Winter’s tenacity and waning will
And soon the still and sterile snowbound lane
Will smell of dust beneath a summer rain

The skeleton of naked apple tree
The maple and the willow, silent, strong
Suffer the span twixt snow and honey-bee
And bud-pods bursting with summer night-song
Outside the wind moans, searching for the choir
Of quivering aspen, poplar, elm and birch
He rakes the stark and unrelenting spire
The woodlot hushed like Monday-morning church
And so he wails across unfettered field
As sleet-tears sting our cheeks, our lips and eyes
His grief exchanged; raw, raging tempests wield
Their utmost in longing’s stormy disguise
A soloist; his passion amplifies
As a cappella storm-song fills the skies

© Janet Martin

Our thoughts are with those on the eastern sea-board once again. Be warm, Be safe.

We are snow-bound in a very broad region in Ontario today.