Wednesday, March 19, 2014

What's in a Poem?





What's in a poem?
An arrangement of words?
A painting of things
Not seen but heard?
God's poetry drenches
The universe
By it we bless His name
Or curse...

What's in a poem?
Soul-strings of thought
Glorious gathering
Of tittle and jot
Stealing our breath
In rudiments stirred
By desperate release
Of heart-blood into word

What's in a poem?
This rhythm and rhyme
Of tasting life's music
One note at a time
...of drinking love's beauty
Again and again
Preserved for the ages
In poem-refrain

What's in a poem?
Feeling's epicenter
Heart-hurricane
Or touch slow and tender
Ravishing Rembrandt
Stunning our gaze
Stanza-vacation
Word-fire blaze

What's in a poem?
Ink-groaning travail
Laughter and sorrow
From life's sacred grail
Muse, mercy, magic
Miracle-form
Wonder-spun wake
Of soundless soul-storm

Janet~


Poetry Math

Heart
+
Soul
=
Poetry

Appointment Card





There is no date
On this card,
So we refuel vehicles,
Rake the yard
Sip coffee
Make love,
Scrub, scold,
The treasure-trove
Of all things human
Closely aligned
With an appointment
That sometimes slips our mind
As we seek, find
Hold, let go
And marvel at the beauty
Of sunset on snow
Or worry that duty
Is bigger than hope
As we try to balance
On life’s one way slope
Drawing us nearer
Not to graves of sod
But to faith-and-trembling,
Face-to-face
Appointment with God

© Janet Martin


Practically Paradise







It’s not the big things I’ll miss
When you go, but the little things
These make a house a home
And tug on love’s heart-strings

And I smile now as you move
Slowly, rapt concentration
The titter of tea-cups and silver
Sing of evening celebration

Delivery complete; Tea-tray touch-down
On coffee-table landing strip
Scent of vanilla-rooibos
Teases the air as we sip

…And chat about little nothings
Which are really not nothings at all
But will tune the whisper of echoes
In mom’s memory-madrigal

© Janet Martin

It's not the big things, but the little things
that make a house a home! 
 
...this was re-iterated just now as I noticed the word POP (aka soda) on the corner of my grocery list. 
Hey, its always worth a try, at least that's what Matt would say:)


a few more 'little everythings'

2 days before Emily's wedding last fall my sister-in-law gave me a lily that she dug from her garden so I quickly plopped it in a planter...we've been enjoying calla lilies this winter-long...

...little guy I babysit LOVES apples!
 It's raining right now. This might bring an end to the after-supper cross-country skiing;( frown, ...oops, smile :)! In spiteof this longer winter there are things I'll miss...




Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Invitation Card





Blush ribbon teases the dividing line twixt night and dawn
Before the sky is wide awake and all its slumber gone
Life’s daily grind both cruel and kind spills time beneath our feet
For we are creatures born to suffer for our bread and meat

That far-off land of monuments where all our memories dwell
Will soon claim what we shape today within its silver swell
But now, before the quietude of midnight fills this span
We have an invitation to do all the good we can

The circuit of the sun is swift and does not linger long
Before we hear the farewell notes of wafting vesper-song
And time is short; its rubric of brief three-score year and ten
Is not a guarantee; and passes like the formless wind

The past is bottomless and always hungry, so it seems
It brushes boyhood from a lad within its moment-streams
And what may seem a trifling portion in its tick-tock pantomime
Accumulates its day-by-day to render a lifetime

A Gracious Hand of beckoning flings wide hope’s gleaming gates
Discourse of daily reckoning begins; dawn dissipates
Where we behold God’s invitation gladdening Time’s sky
And how we use His offering is up to you and I

© Janet Martin

Almost Midnight





The hour is threadbare now and still
The moon a wraith o’er timbered hill
And where not very long ago
Dusk scrawled blue shadows on the snow
Now everything is dark and deep
Where all but waifs and poets sleep

…and what was new this very day
Seals in time’s grave its gold and gray
The air is rife with quietness
Almost midnight; that winsome tress
Where today pauses; sweet and strange
While clocks perform a swift exchange

...as today turns to Yesterday
And Tomorrow is now Today
The old refurbished, fresh and keen
Morning's slate waits, unmarked and clean
The clock strikes twelve, no grand applause
As all that is slips to what was

© Janet Martin

Monday, March 17, 2014

Fairest of Them All or She Suffers





My friend’s mom comes out of her accident practically unscathed!!
Thank-you God!
My sister-in-law has suffered for 20 years since the accident where she was broad-sided by an impaired driver and her survival was called a miracle, and why is it harder for me to say ‘thank-you God’ now through 'why-why-why' tears of misunderstanding?
Why is it so hard to accept answers so different from our desires?
Because we can’t see the finished picture!
Karen’s latest trial, Bell’s Palsy.

She suffers long and not by choice
But does not raise an angry voice
To question God, wail or lament
While we behold love’s testament

She suffers, those around her see
The beauty of humility
Fairest of them all, this saint
Wears suff'ring's crown without complaint

She suffers, through her hurt God spills
His strength where weakness yields its will
While we implore with thought and prayer
'The Lord to help her cross to bear'

© Janet Martin

As I watch her all of my life-complaints ever, seem pathetic...

Please, if you would join our prayers for Dave, Karen and family? 

We Writers



We writers write and bear alike the suffering of it
To breathe in ink those things we think while others simply sit
Without the quest of un-penned best, besot by phrase or form
Or restless heart where hope imparts a sweet and soundless storm

We writers scan the lowing span of new or ancient crypt  
Craving the rush of thoughts that brush, not in pigment but script
The carefree soul saunters and strolls, his thought easy to bear 
While writer's thirst, both blessed and cursed by noon's word-laden air

We writers know the high and low unleashed across a page
How want and will perplex the quill and midnight is a stage
To anywhere a pen may dare to revel in the vaunt
Of oceans stirred within a word; of musing's endless taunt

We writer's dream and nothing seems to be what it appears
Who knew the color blue could move a writer's smile to tears?
And who are we that poetry breathed by a blithesome breeze
Can smite our hand by its command and draw us to our knees?

We writers share the glorious care of searching heaven's face
Where we beseech and humbly reach to touch its hem of grace
Then, here and there the writer's prayer though unarticulate
Enjoys the thrill of words that spill in torrents through thought's gate

Janet Martin

John Greenwood shared an article his sister Joanne wrote and which I think many of us relate to. Read it here at Raining Iguanas


The Verge of Something New...






 These 'angel-clouds' caught my eye this morning!


Out past this sweep of what has been
Of morning, noon and night
The verge of something new begins
In wisps of pink and white

…and though we pour our coffee
Just like many mornings cast
And though we know with our eyes closed
That yesterday is past
And though time’s sequence is the same
Since that first day began
And everything that it may claim
Is common unto man
Of need and greed; sickness and health
Of Ageless Truth and lies
Of double-minded fickleness
And silence of the wise
Of scattered seeds and harvest-time
Of humbleness and pride
Of life’s four-season paradigm
And want unsatisfied
Of crumbs beneath the table
Where the wealthy break their bread
Of doing what we’re able
Ere the evening sky is red
And knowing morning, noon and night
Like waves from heaven’s sea
Must gratify the appetite
Of what is yet to be

And though the morning breaks each morn
Across earth’s slumb’ring shore
The verge of something new is born
...Today; like none before

© Janet Martin