Untethered...

Where girlhoods’ coronation placed a scepter in her hand

She battles the temptation to be carefree once again

But love, though lenient at times cannot condone such flair

To toss with glib abandonment its elements of care

Go east or west or north or south, a mother’s heart is bound

And tethered by the laws of love; prayer is her stopping-ground

For love, her utter Wanting crowns her with both rose and thorn

The having and the holding prelude to a heart half-torn

She cups her hands to cradle one wee moment, but its gleam

Succumbs where Time’s grand ladle spills its tug-of-warring stream

Soon worlds drawn on a drop of dew and dawn’s pink-puddled mist

Dissolves where Duty appoints new commissions to be kissed

Time does not reimburse us for play-things it steals away

But rather it immerses us in blessings of Today

It does not barter with the past, still, every now and then

She smiles to hear her children laugh... untethered once again

© Janet Martin

I would feel stripped soul-naked to be 'untethered' from heart-strings, but oh, its tug is bittersweet...

These are Those Days...

These are those days that long taunted our gaze

As we peered through ice and snow-swaddled pane

These are the hours where fancy’s fine flowers

Painted thought-pictures to ditches and lanes

These are the streams that persuaded our dreams

To dig much deeper than mountains of snow

These are those days; holly-hock, high-noon haze

Where birdies bicker and bronze breezes blow

These are those days of iced tea and heat-waves

Garden-dirt grandeur where Time’s bare feet dash

Reeds reaching higher in sluggish quagmire

Leaf umbrellas and rain-song splish-splash

These are those days, blue pavilion, green chaise

Life is a dream and each pasture a park

Fire-fly flashlights and late, lazy good-nights

…we laugh like love-struck teens out after dark

These are those days; brushed with honey-sweet glaze

Silver-dew mornings and star-spangled nights

These are the hours that falter like flowers

Bursting with beauty to slip from our sight

Touch, taste and treasure its fleet-footed pleasure

Pause ere the pattern of clock-monotone

Snuffs the sun-shimmer where sea-diamonds glimmer

Here for a summer then gone, gone, gone

© Janet Martin

“Ah, these are the days we dream about all winter long!” I said to Victoria as we podded peas beneath maple arches strummed by a soft breeze.  

The Suffering of Innocence

 

The gaping wounds of sorrow stun to silence our complaint

As hate’s hideous horrors bleed upon the innocent

Oh God, you see our anguish and behold the tears that fall

You know this pain; for Innocence once suffered above all

How hard it is to understand the aftermath of hate

Yet Love will conquer; evil cannot enter Heaven’s gate

Be near, I pray, instill Your peace where demons cannot go

Remind us Lord, of Calvary and how you love us so

Gethsemane once bore your prayers; and oh, you prayed for us

Knowing the road that You must bear would lead You to the cross

Lord, help us to stand valiant against the enemy

Succor, comfort and be our strength until we live with Thee

© Janet Martin

I was frustrated because my garden tiller quit and won't start, then I came inside and heard the news of this

   

 ...and this

'We have One who knows and cares 

He hears the words in wordless prayers!'

Like a Little Porch

 ...working in the garden beneath a perfect sky in perfect temperatures with perfect...oops perfectly imperfect kids;)  makes one perfectly happy...mom.

Beneath love’s azure eye

Where cotton-ferries waft

In uncharted infinity

To ports afar, aloft

…sprawls earth; a meager dot

Where on its mutual slope

Gathers upon its mourning plot

We, journey-men of hope

Here bloom and blood-drops mesh

Here people laugh and weep

Here we suffer sorrows of flesh

Toward love’s azure deep

Here glimpses keen our thirst

For what we cannot see

Earth’s dot is like a little porch

Hinged to eternity

© Janet Martin

There Is Something 'bout a Garden...

There is something ‘bout a garden

Quite unlike its kindred ‘folk’

For a garden is a paradise

In spite of all its work

It listens while we pluck and pull

And prune and stake and weed

Nature unfolds its ‘wonderful’

From nothing but a seed

God’s rain and sun caresses

Each seedling like a prayer

And how its laughter blesses

Each one who pauses there

…not by its grand perfection

But by its impetus

A sweet and strange reflection

Of God’s kind patience with us

We cannot hurry flowers

Nor can we rush the root

That needs its ordained hours

Before we see its fruit

And while we wait we wander

Among its reaching green

To play and pray and ponder

Life’s miracles unseen

And somewhere in the measure

Of tilling, toiling-test

The bud unfolds its pleasure

And puts our doubts to rest

Yes, there’s something ‘bout a garden

Quite unlike all other earth

Where bare feet pitter-patter

On God's footpaths to re-birth

© Janet Martin

I have a feeling after a week away, we are going to return to a sunflower-jungle;) I decided to leave the ‘volunteer plants’ after some of the potatoes didn’t come up…if the soil isn’t working for produce plant Pleasure!

Beneath sun-flower coppice zinnias beam!