What We Do

We know they have caught

More than we can ever say

But we try to give them

A little advice anyway

We know for all the words

Expressed in concern

It’s what we do

Whereby they learn

We know now

Childhood is soon gone

Shaped in essence

By what we, their parents, have done

© Janet Martin

A child is taught by what is caught.

Yes, that proverb is true!

May we be inspired

 To work with them, play with them;

Laugh with them and pray with them!

                                                                         and listen too.

It's easy to beat ourselves up with the 'coulda-shoulda-stuff' when looking back, but today is a gift to do! Let's do what we ought to today!

Of Realizations and Routines

 Emily (middle) with her sisters, Victoria (left) and Melissa (right) on the evening we celebrated Emily's last birthday as Miss Emily. Next year she is hoping to be Mrs.

It slams, like a wave on my back

Unexpectedly; its pain

A Realization of what will never

Come to pass

Again

Surely love should don calluses

But its pain is raw and keen

I've learned by heart its ache

In give-and-take

Routine

And suddenly, unexpectedly

Like a wave’s stinging smack

I feel the grief of disbelief

In what I can never have

Back

© Janet Martin

I am constantly being hit with the realization that life as I knew it is over soon. The, 'this is the last first day of summer with our whole family living at home... this is the last time the peonies will bloom before the wedding... this is the last time...it goes on and on, But, love adapts with change!(and most of our 'lasts' we do not recognize; most of our 'lasts' we do not know)

Another realization I am admitting to, is that no matter how often I say ‘Use the closet!’ they will never use the closet. While I was writing this poem I tripped on some shoes on my way to the laundry room...

Summer Invitation

The dew-drenched dawn ignites the lawn

In dazzling invitation

The charcoal crypt of night has slipped

To our imagination

Now feathered choir and blossomed spire

In blameless exaltation

Urge us to come and join the song

Of morning celebration

Past falls away, we do not stay

To till again its garden

But hope’s embrace in dew-drenched grace

Extends its gentle pardon

So you and I should fully try

Not to squander its hours

Yet, we should sit a little bit

And listen to the flowers

For soon their bloom will fill the tomb

Where summer’s solstice lingers

We cannot feel Time’s ether reel

Slipping through our fingers

© Janet Martin

Victoria was reading this as I wrote and she offered her bit of advice;

‘But if ya’ stop to smell the roses do it quick or a bumble-bee’s liable to nail ya’

Quoted from Si; Duck Dynasty

Happy First Day of Summer, y'all!

It Is Not Easy to Love

 

 Read about the image and its source  here

It is not easy to love with utter abandon

Of self

To say ‘God, I believe You, I love You’

Then lie on the altar of sacrifice

It is not easy to profess His love

In full awareness of He

Who beholds the heart

...and we cannot open our hearts to love

while clenching fists

It is not easy to love

Until it hurts

And yet

That is the only Love

There is

© Janet Martin

The next time we say ‘I love you’ we should consider the cost

For love is not a feeling, but a laying down of our uttermost

Treasure-chest

We trace them, but not with our fingers

We kiss them, but not with our lips

And oh, how their essence lingers

Long after the hour slips

We hold them but not in embraces

We keep them but not in our clutch

Echoes of times and places

Cradled in ethereal touch

The heart is a vault filled with treasure

Of love and its lessons we learn

As memory's immutable measure

Preserves what can never return

© Janet Martin

Let's make today's treasure something to treasure! God bless and keep.

Monkey-bars

Image Source

I push through

Memories of my own childhood

Scanning the playground

Where students

Like colorful bobbing balloons

Race and run

High on dreams

Of summer vacation

And suddenly I see her

‘Pink tee-shirt monkey

Dangling from the jungle-gym

Her blonde hair streaming in the

Three-o’clock sun

Her teacher and I

Touch glances

Laughing

As her

Scattered, flamboyant personality

Studies the strangeness

Of an

Up-side down

World

© Janet Martin

Yesterday I attended my daughter's annual June picnic at her school. While her teacher and I chatted and discussed the year suddenly we both spotted her swinging up-side down from the top of the soccer-net  as if to testify to our amusements and frustrations of a carefree, scatterbrained Victoria.

Kid's Poem on Telling the Truth

I ought to never tell a lie

‘Cause lies like company

And soon the lie that first was one

Turns into two or three

For when a lie begins to lose

Its word-woven disguise

We protect it from the truth

By telling some more lies

And suddenly it’s hard to tell

How many lies were said

So it is always wise and well

To tell the truth instead

© Janet Martin

Of Almost-Poems

Ah troubadour, vexing the schemes of pen

You dangle unformed; vainly we beseech

Your laughter drifting just beyond our reach

A madrigal taunting the dreams of men

Almost, the wind combing the moon-brushed hill

Unravels your mute, mystic revelry

We glean the quiet, poised in poesy

But you evade the ink-breath in our quill

Elusive lover; will we ever know

The sweetness of your nectar, fancy-spun

A sparkle on the sea in glints of sun

A rush of vapor-ocean ebb and flow

Ah, troubadour of thought-blood left unshed

The compositions in your phantom sigh

Evokes a hunger in the poet’s eye

For all the rivers that remain unbled

© Janet Martin

Does it drive you crazy too...reaching for that thought that cannot be spelled?