Thursday, June 27, 2013

Summer Madrigal





When streams in silver ribbon tease
The meadows flush with clover bloom
As winter’s fireside fantasies
Embellish nature’s living-room
When dawn melts gold into each rill
And dusk leans long against earth’s loam
Cajoled by lark and whippoorwill
And mother’s calling children home
Then we are all princes and lords
As summer spills its sanguine hoards

When sea-song rolls across bare feet
Where gulls waft high on hazy blues
And winds grow lazy in the heat
Rippling on milkweed avenues
When golden-rod sprouts plumes of green
And earth is giddy 'neath its crown
Then surely summer is a queen
And we the stragglers on her gown
As daisy rivers drift awry
Where ditches lure the roving eye

When lovers stroll exotic lanes
Behind the barn beneath the moon
Or pictures pulse within our veins
Begging to spill in ink-fraught swoon
On easels formed of sun-swept hill
Where palettes pour their rainbow yield
In petal-poem madrigal
Of flowers flowing through a field
As summer flings ajar her door
There are no beggars on her shore

© Janet Martin


Since this is the last day of school before summer-break I treated myself to a long bike ride this morning...well sort-of treated because it ended up being a ride in the rain;) Still, summer swelled in top-notch form!


Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Words and/or Action



 


Words ease our conscience
And make us feel good
But a living example
Needs no substitute

Wise words are golden
And essential
But only when spoken
In action as well

Words spell instruction
But its message is clearer
If our action
Reflects in its mirror

© Janet Martin


Of Beacons and Dreamers



 


Oh, let me never hinder
Or snuff the giddy gleam
Lighting your lithesome laughter
And the power to your dream

Oh, let me never crumple
Your footloose fantasy
Or make you fearful to embrace
More than the eye can see

But let me gently urge you
With kindly words or wise
For no one ever conquers, dear
What no one ever tries

And let me never tarnish
Or trample on the hope
That keeps you gazing yonder
To that fair and phantom slope

Let me never extinguish
That dear and darling spark
For to a dreamer it will be
Your beacon in the dark 

© Janet Martin

This may seem like it is not very hard to do, but sometimes it is!

Heart-thief...to my fifteen year-old son

Contemplating the end of a school year re-ignited the words I wrote for my son a year ago when he graduated from Grade 8.
 
 
 
It is not a swift wrenching from my grasp
Or my chest
As you steal my heart
No.
It is a patient sort of tender anguish
Probing,
Pondering
Sweet and slow,
It is rendered in sudden
Intake of breath
A smile
A tear
A sigh
It trembles beneath me
Deep in the earth
As I look into your eyes
For I know full well
That parting lurks
Somewhere, in quiet wait
I hear it in the creaking
Of the rusty garden gate
And how your step
Falls heavier
Than when you were a lad
It makes me fully happy
And oh,
So fully sad
To know that you are stealing
With my blessing
Part by part
The deep
Innermost lining
Of your
Mother’s
Heart
© Janet Martin

Release





I found myself breathing these words this morning...

Dear Lord, help me to trust in You
And not to live in hopeless need
But with the peace of sweet release
Allowing You to intercede

Dear Lord, help me to trust in You
To place the weight of faithless fear
Within the grace of Your embrace
Remembering that You are near

Dear Lord, help me to trust in You
Relinquishing each care-worn part
Dear Lord, I need faith’s mustard seed
Help me to trust with all my heart

© Janet Martin

Sometimes it feels like there's an added weight to life's loads of care, Lord, help me pray then leave it there.

 Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
    bind them around your neck,
    write them on the tablet of your heart.
Then you will win favor and a good name
    in the sight of God and man.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.[a]
Do not be wise in your own eyes;
    fear the Lord and shun evil.
This will bring health to your body
    and nourishment to your bones. Prov. 3:3-8


Of Breath-bindings





They drift away
Gossamer shells
Without a flicker
Of farewell
And though they hold
Within their clutch
The staggering
Softness of touch
Where love and loss
And longing bleed
Where hope and faith
And honor plead
Where blood and sweat
And tears caress
The footfalls
Of our humanness
And monumental
Penitence
Bound in half-breath
Deliverance
They slip into the
Languid hour
Plucking the
Glory from the flower
And children from
A mother’s reach
They rend, they croon
Tender and teach
Then slip into
Impassive air
Buoyed by whispered
Wings of prayer
Or perhaps
Just a little sigh
As we murmur
Good-bye, good-by
But they do not turn
To reply
Or brush the teardrop
From our eye
Though they have stolen
Part by part
The utmost linings
Of the heart
They spin into
The atmosphere
Beneath a guise
That we call
Year

Janet~ 

So many year endings and beginnings in a year. This heat-wave has finished off this year's peonies abruptly, the school-year ends, another year of summer-vacation begins, Moments molding Milestones melting into moments making memories.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Life.


Of Pendulums and Purpose





The pendulum that draws the sun
From east to west to east
And lights the wick to virgin hope
As old dreams are released
It spurs us ever forward
In a tick-tock melody
‘Til flesh and soul are parted
At life’s final destiny

The misty morning gilds the dell
And spills into the deep
We fill our mouths with daily bread
And pray the Lord to keep
Our feet in paths of righteousness
Lest in errant folly
We see too late the horror of
Our heedless apathy

The pendulum that marks the hour
The hour that marks a day
The days that number weeks and years
Are not mere feckless fray
They are our gifted steppingstones
Leading, not to the sod
But from this earth to Heaven’s throne
And to the arms of God

© Janet Martin

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Happy Summer Vacation to all Teachers and Students




It seems that we have come upon an island in the sea
Two months of sweet vacation-time already; can it be?
The gangplank lowers to the cries of farewell and ahoy
For it’s summer-vacation time for every girl and boy

Was it not just a mile ago that we embarked upon
A voyage charted, page by page to gossamer unknown?
Where autumn lit its match and leaf-song faded to the earth
The limb has been refurbished with summer’s green-gilded mirth

Beneath the watchful eye of Captain, crew, deckhands and such
We see a generation rise beneath love's patient touch
The bashful dreamer dances now and leaps into the sky
The fearful fledgling spreads its wings, eager to soar and fly

The fathers and the mothers try to find the words to say
Thank-you to those who teach them who they want to be someday
But all that we can muster as we search for words to speak
Is ‘thank-you dearest teachers, for the things you do each week’

The halls that ring with shouts and greeting soon will bear the pall
Of footsteps faint and fleeting where a thousand echoes fall
And though we disembark; though miles may draw us far apart
We keep our precious memories forever in the heart

(last verse optional)
Was it not just a mile ago that we embarked upon
A voyage where each lesson was a little stepping-stone?
And now its seems that we have reached their darling destiny
All eyes are on the clock for soon its tick-tock sets them free

© Janet Martin