Contemplating...You

Poetics Aside PAD: For today’s prompt, write a tentative poem. The poem could be about a tentative date, a tentative person, a tentative situation. The narrator could be tentative. The subject could be tentative.

Hearts are not flowers pressed between pages

This flesh-blood appendage of life

Suffers obscurely wild passion that rages

In conflict, in wonder, in strife

I cannot give you with reckless abandon

Blood-petals composing its sphere

But consider first with firm contemplation

Your whisper caressing my ear

Why is it that echoes evoke a keen hunger

For more than the hull of your sigh?

And why does the tenure of yesterday’s laughter

Feel now like an endless goodbye?

Wisdom and knowledge divide the heart’s choosing

The mind knows what life has made known

But somehow when you press your lips to my musing

My heart has a mind of its own

I cannot mute mortal need and desire

Though mind may employ its staid part

It cannot guard with barracks of fire

The thought of you stealing my heart

© Janet Martin

Love's Masterpiece

 The snowflakes glittered like golden grace-gems in the rising sun...

From ether-fount of hope

His faithful mercy streams

As out beyond the eastern slope

A new day gently gleams

The shroud of night’s release

Is tendered to its tomb

Look up; behold Love’s masterpiece

Gilding earth’s living-room

No, our God is not dead

His love prolongs His grace

Compassion gently weaves its thread

To earth from outer space

Take courage, brother, friend

Beneath our erring touch

Oh, see His kind goodness extend

From heaven’s aureate brush

...and from hope's astral door

Night's shadow is impaled

As sacred salutations pour

A new day is unveiled

© Janet Martin

 But I will sing of your strength, in the morning I will sing of your love; for you are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble. Psalms 59:16

Look up, see the radiant Light erase

the darkened void

Be overjoyed

'Tis no small thing; another day of grace

You and Me

For all the generations past

Or waiting yet to be

You will be the only you

And me the only me

Then we should try to be our best

For there will never be

In all the people of the world

Another you or me

© Janet Martin

Visage and Surrender

Again and again

You show Your love

Oh God, help me to see it

Again and again

You prove Your love

Oh, God help me to be it

© Janet Martin

Sing a Song of Popcorn

Sing of song of popcorn

When the eve is dull

Those dancing, darling champions

Will make your laughter full

Sing a song of popcorn

With book or show or chess

Gather grownups, children

To taste its happiness

Sing a song of popcorn

Enticing melody

Pot-bellied little rascals

Of warm simplicity

Sing a song of popcorn

And let the good times roll

As children of all ages

Gather round the bowl

© Janet Martin

Popcorn is an instant party!

Beautiful Thought

You come…

An intangible jot

Captured and held

In a beautiful thought

Miles and moments

Cannot steal

The pictures preserved

On this phantom reel

You touch

Where flesh cannot

In the ravaging bliss

Of a beautiful thought

J~

Heart of Hearts- Don Williams

Of Things Familiar

I run my fingers over your curves and lines

Oh, I know them well and with my eyes closed

I can tell where your imperfections are

The beautiful broken, the shards of life

Flung into this cup cradling the strife

Of temporal sorrow and joy

…of dashing barefoot boy

Or the giggling passage of ribbons and curls

And little girls

On their way to being women

And my smile traces these love-worn places

Bearing the permanent image of faces

…on a slide-show of moments where

We gathered for dinner; the table and chairs

Scarred testaments of happiness and family

Of comfort in familiarity

In this place where we come; discarding brave masks

Because we are at home

© Janet Martin

Mr. April

 (even the sunrise has been a little 'moody' the past few days, with the clouds claiming the horizon-line and stretching past eight o' clock before releasing the sun)

Ah, you moody beauty

Cantankerous delight

Teasing first with sun-spun mirth

Then cloud-feathers of white

Ah, dearest mellow fellow

Ah, testy troubadour

Of frigid sheen and virgin green

And violet-fragrant floor

Ah, harbinger of summer

Ah, dregs of winter’s blast

You vex, perplex nature’s vortex

With gray and gold contrast

Ah sweet, sinister mister

You ride the buxom breeze

Then leap upon a bully storm

Without apologies

Ah, darling moody beauty

How nonchalant you blow

As you caress spring's timid tress

With frost-florets of snow

© Janet Martin 

It is such a day today, one moment sunny then the wind howls, unleashing a volley of flakes, that melt when the sun re-appears!