Ah, Season-sweep

Ah, season-sweep, how swift you leap

On nimble feet from stone to stone

You spill your fare of faith and prayer

Into the vortex of Bygone

From page to page and age to age

Unknown’s mute metamorphosis

Of what will be… is history

As what we touch, no longer is

Ah, season-sweep, within your keep

You gather little boys and girls

As soft you seal upon your reel

The innocence of un-teased curls

With deft disguise, love’s laughing eyes

Distract us from Time’s subtle ploy

Of yester-yen and making men

Of last summer’s rambunctious boy

Ah, season-sweep, the past is deep

With centuries of your demise

Where bud and leaf and joy and grief

Pass through our touch in moment-guise

From heaven’s urn your no return

Spills; thrilling, filling our reach

With season-ware and painted air

And lessons only you can teach

© Janet Martin 

Ah, we cannot reverse the sweep

where Time's tumble-weed seasons sleep...

Of Vantage and View-points

What do you see, bird in the tree?

Flitting freely from limb to limb

Or you, as you look back at me

Judging appearances of skin

What do you see, dear girl of twelve?

The outside looking in won’t show

Heart-oceans where love steals my breath

In rushing, reeling over-flow

What do you see as you pass by?

Vague view-points from the street won’t tell

Of life here on the other side

...its glimpses of heaven or hell

What do you see? Our vantage-point

Renders and shapes our point of view

I wonder sometimes, would mine change

If I was standing where you do…

© Janet Martin

School buses are up and running today! I saw Victoria double-check to see if I was at my usual waiting-spot inside the kitchen window and then, as she waved to me from the bus I suddenly wondered what her memory of this looks like…mine is the outline of a girl growing a little bigger every year; someday, like everything in life this too will disappear…

Sometimes, to change our point of view, God changes our view-point.

Of Hearts, Unknowns and Faith...

I know Whom I believe

I know that He is able

To guard the Unknown seeping through

Dawn’s faint and far-east gable

I know Whom I believe

Beneath life’s great Unknown

He cups His hands in faithful keep

And fills dark night with dawn

I know Whom I believe

Keeper of field and heart

Cradles in ceaseless vigilance

Unknowns unformed rampart

 

I know Whom I believe

Each fear and doubt I place

Into His promises and then

Press onward by His grace

© Janet Martin

My Dad, who has known little sickness in this life found out the other day that he will need heart-bypass surgery.( initially they assured him they should be able to avoid this) He suffered a heart-attack two days after we celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary in September, but we are thankful that this warning made us aware of his heart-condition. This down-time is testing the patience of a man who thrived on keeping busy, but being a man of deep faith I know that He knows Whom he believes and Knows that He is able…so his ‘heart-condition’ is okay in the Hands of the Keeper.

 For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day. 2 Tim.1:12

Of Illusion And Memories

Illusions are not memories

Nor memories illusion

Now and then we are perplexed

By illusion’s intrusion

Thus causing momentarily

For us to become blind

To what we hold of moment gold

By fancy of the mind

Illusions are not memories

Though thought flings wide a door

To sundry painted fantasies

Of what one wishes for

But we are thought’s proprietor

And must be diligent

To guard that wide and winsome door

From thankless discontent

Illusions are not memories

Nor memories illusion

Though perhaps they vex and tease

In chimeral confusion

Majestic wave from rolling seas

Its grandeur awes and pleases

To disappear in moment-ease

Upon the sand beneath us

Illusions are not memories

Although they spread their fare

In likened manner, readily

On thought-scapes boundless stair

We cannot hear the echo of

Illusion, only want

As memories console with love

Where vain illusions taunt

© Janet~

A Sing-song of Sorts

Sometimes, when ice-filigree

Tries to get the best of me

Offering on offering

Of cold on cold, I sing

…and sing

I sing of barefoot little boy,

Of pansy-grin or coffee joy

Winter tracing bracken nook

Milk-weed lining muted brook

I sing of laughing lass with curls

Brides with dreams, Young men with girls

Of lover and his love is mine…

I sing of summer and sunshine

Memory-quilts stitched on the air

Lily-lilt frozen somewhere

Heaven-hope and rose-romance

Wild-bloom slope and daisy-dance,

Darling hellos and goodbyes

Morning melting midnight skies

Merchants pushing laden carts

Market-places, broken hearts

Lone leaf scuttling up a street

Long past noon-day’s hurried feet

Spiraling of thought on thought

I sing of forget-me-not

Rambling river, vesper-trill

Moonlight halo on a hill

Moment-might and mighty men

Poems pouring from a pen

Bastion of prayerful heart

God and nature’s endless art

I sing of a garden-gate

Where spring’s first bud-jewels wait

Shadows blue on twilight-shroud

Rain-song dripping from a cloud

Oh, and winter’s vast off-spring

Snow on snow on snow…I sing

© Janet Martin

Sunlight seeps cold gold today...

White Winter-tide

Black to blue to white you dawn

Morning-tide on winter’s lawn

Cimmerian undertones

Wind, frost-knuckled moans and groans

Testing sashes, vexing shores

Lending light twixt swinging doors

Where dawn-break and dusk soon meet

In a night-day-fall repeat

Every hill and rill and rim

Clad in snow-song seraphim

Now we covet things like gold

Not the kind that we can hold

But the kiss of sun and such

Evading cold winter’s touch

Where a dolor morning-tide

Tiptoes over countryside

Tucked from tippy-toe to chin

Beneath Old Man Winter’s grin

White on white on white foray

Spiked perhaps by tree-sprig-gray

Once upon a greener day

We watched morning wend its way

Like a lady, finely-dressed

In turquoise and amethyst

Spilling coral in her wake

Melting mauve across the lake

Where now, waltz of winter-tide

Petrifies the countryside

Lingering to spill its mirth

White on white on white-capped earth

© Janet Martin

Ink's Fondest Luxury

Ah, Poetry, it seems to me

Must be ink’s fondest luxury

Scattered fragments of a heart

Picture-frames of nature’s art

Agony and ecstasy

Bleeding into poetry

Dances of despair, desire

Rushing reels of ice and fire

Love and longing synchronize

Hope and heartache fill its skies

Where ink’s fondest luxury

Fills night-sighs with poetry

Centuries of testament

Spill in laughter and lament

Battle-ground of pain and peace

Luxury of ink-release

Mantra of a memory

Fondly framed in poetry

© Janet Martin

 The log I put on the fire at midnight didn't burn very well. Due to our COLD temps the stove-pipes got too cold creating a downdraught and at 3:00 a.m. we were woken to shrieking smoke alarms and a house plugged with smoke.kinda terrifying! I chucked the smoking log out into a snow-drift.  It took a few hours to figure out how to thaw windows open, clear smoke, reverse the draft. and get a fire burning again.online article a tremendous help (hairdryer up the chimney flue)

Now, coffee black and...poetry:) 

Matt is in school today but the buses to the elementary schools are not running so Victoria can make up for the sleep she missed during the night.

Collaboration of Contrast...edited rendition

Truth does not change

Season follows season

Night fills the hollow where dawn rends its blue

I cannot rearrange

Love’s restless reason

Longing still follows the having of you

The more that I love you

The deeper I hunger

The deeper I hunger the fuller I love

Perplexing paradox

Pushing me onward

Searching for something I know nothing of

Out on the skyline

Poplar and pine shiver

Here in the blackness of white winter night

Symmetrical contrasts

Collaborate, quiver

Tender-sweet torment and bitter delight

© Janet Martin