Duty-Duel with a Kitchen-Countess

…To laugh the giddy laugh of innocence

Or lie beneath noon’s tree in guiltless ease

Ah Childhood; Keeper of lost luxuries

Stolen somehow by Duty’s recompense

And suddenly I covet the romance

Of girlish fancies, crumpled ‘neath the glare

Of dirty dishes and dust-pan despair

While doggedly pursuing Duty’s dance

Somewhere, but not in crypts of lifeless sod

A shy grave sprawls where I dare never weep

Lest I forfeit these gifts within my keep

Of blessing rendered by dear Duty’s rod

Rose-fingered dawn will soon fold to its breast

Another day of toil and spoil and such

I tremble now beneath the testing touch

Where love and longing vie for Duty’s best

© Janet Martin~

Spring-dreamin'

There, pillowed ‘neath the wooing wind

Fair spring has spread her floral dress

And we, hungry for her caress

Leave winter-weary woes behind

The dreamer of a thousand dreams

Is enticed to forsake his lust

Of garbled this and that; this dust

Is sweeter than thought’s phantom streams

The tyrant that growled grimly by

Our door in vexatious dissent

Has left his shivering lament

To amble from a bluer sky

And dimly now we might recall

The cut-throat gale and ice-travail

But we are drunk on perfumed ale

Of apple-bloom and lilac-shawl

While pillowed on a wooing cot

Of grass-whisper ‘neath new-born leaf

The weariness of winter-grief

Slumbers in cradles long-forgot

© Janet Martin

Ere Wings This Little Day...

Ere wings to rest this little day

Of sundry want and wonder

As unknowns their indictments splay

Within our thought to ponder

…And ere its flight disintegrates

In soundless composition

Its palavering and debate

Fodder for recollection

Ere droops the bloom of good intent

Of darling dream and duty

As morning’s silver stream is bent

To twilight’s tempest-beauty

…ah, would that we taste full its sweet

Its wisp of want and weeping

Ere daylight dies beneath our feet

To past’s eternal keeping

© Janet Martin

Love Exercises

Stretching,

Bending,

Pressing,

Reaching,

Exercises in

Love-

Teaching

Trusting,

Leaning,

Bowing,

Yearning,

Exercises in

Love-

Learning

© Janet Martin

Plea

Oh Thou who ravishes the dawn

With grace and golden splendor

Sketching on canvas of Unknown

What soon a day will render

Oh Thou who hears each pleading prayer

Though wept in secret sorrow

Help us our lot of love to bear

Without fear of tomorrow

Teach us each moment to bestow

A truthful, humble living

And ease our weight of want and woe

With genuine thanksgiving

© Janet Martin

Psalms 104:30 - Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.

Rip-tide

There is nothing we can do

To still life's moment-tide

See how snowflake slips into dew

Covering country-side

See how wee boy becomes a man

And youth gasps; he is old

While ever in a moment-span

Its stunning laws unfold

And there is nothing we can do

For moments never rest

Ah yes, me-thinks there is one thing

…we can do our best

© Janet Martin

Heart-art

 Today is...gray.

No shadows dapple the front lawn today

Earth is a canvas of gray over gray

Darling, if it were not for love’s thought-art

It would be the color of my heart

No wild-bloom flowers on streets to the sky

No golden sun-beam or green-leaf lullaby

Darling, without us I fear this bleak art

Would be the colorless gloom of my heart

No purple posies on noon’s dinner-tray

No blue pavilion; just gardens of gray

Darling, if it were not for love’s whispered art

Today would be the color of my heart

© Janet Martin

Toast to January

We chase June echoes across feathered pane

Grand Jack Frost empires melt beneath our sigh

Up from the skyline of mottled terrain

Dawn drinks iced-ebony from midnight’s sky

Mute magistrates of a law undeterred

Oversee icy extolments obeyed

Orderlies dressed in stiff, white over-shirt

Tumble, responding in cloned escapade

Winds scold and simper, as warm zephyrs slink

Like chastised ruffians to sunny-south pews

The brogue of winter moans at every chink

Bent on fulfilling its preordained dues

We brave its volley of steel-tongue barrage

Pouring Colombian second-cup toast

'...to ether-esque echoes of mist-morn mirage

Shimmering somewhere beyond Jack Frost boast'

© Janet Martin