Missing Parts...

I’ve stood at my heart-and-mind mirror

To stare past reflections of ‘ought’

And covered the skyline with whispers

Never cut free from my thought

The words I have never written

Would cover the sky and the sea

Where tears are the voice of the smitten

And silence its full agony

Down where the lane dips to nothing

Where meadow-grass and blue sky touch

I think there must be an ocean

Filled with lost poems and such

Honor must wear its thorns bravely

Siphon its crimson and drink

The cup of loneliness, baby

Fills wildernesses with ink

© Janet~

Soft Among the Reeds They Wake...

Soft, soft among the reeds they wake

To wander ‘cross the sky

A glimmer on time’s winter lake

Into the by and by

Moon-mellow moments spill to naught

Then daylight tips the scale

Before its blue and gold is caught

In midnight’s mystic grail

From far-off shores to home-front door

This breaking, taking wake

Of kissing you and missing you

Tucks years into its strake

© Janet Martin

Of Well-springs and Wonder

Well-spring of wonder

Merciful Morning

Soothes yester-heaviness

From troubled brow

Somewhere between

Dusk-darkness and dawning

God fills the hour

With Morning’s new Now

Just as the New Year

Melds o’er the departed

Merciful Morning

Melts night’s ebony

Light fills the ocean

Of onyx impression

Well-spring of wonder

In grace-symphony

See, heaven’s hand

He held Jordan’s waters

Doom and deliverance

Meet at death’s brink

See how He fills

Night’s hollow with morning

Kneel at His well-spring

Of mercy and drink

© Janet Martin

Over and over morning melts the night and Grace extends His arm.

Tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’  For the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over.  He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.” Joshua 4:22-24

Mine, Mine, Mine...and please, don't call me greedy

Darling, please, don’t call me selfish

but sometimes I’m not willing

to share your words

with anyone

so I lock them away

for my eyes only to read.

The heart is a gracious keeper.

Sometimes I feel

green-color greedy for your laugh-lines

where only I

want to kiss them

and run my fingers

across those curves

familiar only to me.

And when you are asleep

and I am not

I even want the silence that wraps us

to be mine

to fill with thoughts

entitled

Us~

© Janet Martin

The Shaping of Thought...

They fall like seeds to the wayside of living

Or drift like leaves on a half-written sigh…

Darling, we all need someone to talk to

Word fills the oceans between you and I

They speak our stories; unborn desire

Trembles in font of relinquished turmoil

Somehow the midnight evokes a rare nuance

Lost in the shuffle of mid-morning moil

Mind-scripted manna and silver sun-sparkle

Captured, then molded to shape our thought

 Ink-flavored morsels of loving and longing

Keening the tresses of what yet is not...

Quick little creatures; might fills their meek bearing

Wafting ‘cross miles with the click of a key

Sealed on a stage between covers of parchment

Painting those pictures only thought can see

They fill our diaries and journals; our passion

Ever the hunter for word’s perfect ploy

Finger-tip fragments of heart-soul expression

Spilling in sonnets of sorrow or joy

Darling, without them we simply have kisses

Kisses grow cold when our lips cannot touch

Word, lovely word fills the ocean between us

Shaping the echo of whispers and such…

© Janet~

Of Eons and Ink

The swell of spilled ink

Falls from ether brink

And none of us knows its full reach

Its thought-river rolls

From the whisper of souls

To thrill and to comfort and teach

We grapple inside

At the tug of its tide

Craving, rebelling, we fight

Keen intercourse

Of thought finding voice

Trembling and trusting, we write

Over Time’s ramparts

And ocean of years

Ink-rivers surge to a place

Of heart touching heart

Though oceans apart

Eons and ink interlace

© Janet Martin

Happy New Year!  

(Lord willing this little creek will keep trickling:)

J~

Worth Fighting For...

Nobody said it would be easy…

…these things worth having and living for,

Worth crying and dying and praying for

And we can never fully know

What lies in store

Beyond the silent war

…the heart-wrenching,

Fist-clenching,

Face-drenching fight

But God knows

so everything will be

All right

© Janet Martin

Dream-stealer...

He used to stand up straight and tall

The hills, why he could scale them all

He believed that dreams come true

And life was hope's grand avenue

But now his shoulders slump a bit

The dream-gleam is no longer lit

 For Criticism will destroy

And steal both dreamer and the boy

© Janet Martin