What's in a Poem?

What's in a poem? she asks. (a must read!)

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...

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

Fairest of Them All or She Suffers

  

Image Source

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