September-ness

Daylight dwindles to pink sash on the west

Summer swindles silk from Time’s season-chest

Autumn kindles copse with russet caress

Ah, these are the shades of September-ness

Goldenrod rivers rush in every ditch

Sky and sod quivers are mulled-color rich

Poplar-choir shivers, silver enchantress

Ah, these are the shades of September-ness

Blue breezes banter with keener intent

Caramel teases green-sheen filament

Plum purple pleases the palette’s finesse

Ah, these are the shades of September-ness

Bronze fronds respond to the touch of Time’s love

Pewter ponds mirror her heaven above

Summer-blonde heroes fall prey to gray tress

Ah, these are the shades of September-ness

© Janet Martin

Mastering Marriage...an Ongoing Art

   

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Love’s culmination of differences

Must learn to co-exist

Its Mr.’s and its Mrs.’s

Experiments of risk

Back when we knew it all; naïve

To all we didn’t know

It was so easy to believe

In what we thought was so

But Time rolls out its welcome mat

Where love cannot pretend

So love becomes an acrobat

Learning to stretch and bend

And love becomes forgetful

For how else can it usurp

With heavy heart and head full

Of its insult and its hurt?

Back on youth’s dream-paved Easy streets

Answers exceeded years

Before we bore selfish defeats

And wore a lover’s tears

Before we understood that we

Will never understand

Each other quite as perfectly

As once, perhaps, we planned

…so love culminates differences

And learns to co-exist

Its Mr.’s and its Mrs.’s

Willing to take its risk

© Janet Martin

Marriage is a step-by-step fulfilling of vows resulting in years of anniversaries.
No one ever stayed married because it was easy.
Love makes possible the impossible.
Happy is he/she who learns to love...

The man over my shoulder (cropped for his privacy-sake)...

... was celebrating his 75th anniversary. He told us they announced it at church and everyone clapped for them! Not realizing the priest's mic was on he said to him, well, I guess I'm in it too deep to get out! of course, everyone laughed and clapped again:) His wife told us they still love to dance!

Here and There

Yesterday, far from a pen

You vexed me with your acumen

Now here I sit and stare, the air

Stripped of what yesterday was There

…and There, for all its fantasy

Is always far too far from me

Ah, perhaps There, for all I think

Is nothing but five-letter ink

...the ebb and flow of here to there

Intangible, is like the air

existing in aery sigh

That vexes as it passes by

The pantomime of rhythm and rhyme

Some deem a tedious waste of time

But they are There and I am here

And oh, we disagree, my dear

So There you are and Here am I

We cannot meet and yet we try

For There fills possibility

…here skins its air for poetry

© Janet Martin

Think on These Things

Think on these things;

We on time’s wings

Are caught in middle-prayer

Life's foreign phrases

On our tongue

Soon become familiar

Think on these things;

New mercy springs

Where we abused clock-gold

Yet every morning

God bequeaths

New mercy for the old

Think on these things

We are here

But oh, He is not There

He is with us

Both Here and Now

and ever Everywhere

© Janet Martin

I feel like I live in middle-prayer these days; case in point…today Melissa is having a new country-meets-city experience. Catching the bus home. She just messaged me with ‘My stupid bus didn't stop for me, so now I have to wait another hour for the next one

She reassured me she is fine but...

Pray with me??

'Like Petals of a Summer'...I Heard the Fallen Leaves Whisper

We gather on a green mezzanine

And for lack of good news

We reminisce

A collection of wayfarers

En route

To what no longer is

This thoroughfare is a smattering

Of this and that

And this

Yet we are transfixed

In the chattering

Not of what was, but is

Life’s relentless rendering

Of bud to bloom

Soon lies

In ever-expanding

Tombs; its rooms

Beneath a sweep of skies

Deeds, like seeds are capsules

Of much more

Than they might seem

Life's little season-vestibule

Is more

Than 'but a dream'

We are all newcomers

To this reunion

On the grass

Like petals of a summer

Where all things come 

...to pass

© Janet Martin