All Day The Color Gray Rained down...

 Farewell Gray Day...

and Goodnight

All day the color gray rained down

And drenched earth’s ragged dressing-gown

Then dusk, like an umbrella spread

Its deeper hue above each head

Where twilight is an ill, chill sea

And firelight, kind company

The wind, a friendless vagabond

Wails at each window and beyond

The treeline where the field is bare

Save for the rivers running where

All day the color gray rained down

Like tears from Old Man Winter’s frown

Before the morning draws ashore

Perhaps his tears will cease to pour

And he with his last farewell spent

Will climb into his bed, content

…strange comfort this, to listen to

Dear Old Man Winter weep adieu

© Janet Martin

Gray April Showers

Only one word comes to mind to describe today's weather...WILD!

The wind bares its teeth

And the low sky glowers

While Earth huddles beneath

Grey April showers

Before spring’s buxom

And bloom laden bowers

Earth must first soften ‘neath

Grey April showers

Pond-sized puddles

Will water May flowers

Waiting somewhere beneath

Gray April showers

© Janet Martin

Dare To Be Different

 Write a dare poem is PAD Challenge day 8

 This picture in The Bible In Pictures For Little Eyes, first read to us by our mom, is etched in my mind when I picture Daniel in the lions den...

It is tempting to conform,

When it is evident

No one really cares at all

If we dare to be different

If we dare to stand against

The popular masses

We will likely not obtain

Attention by its classes

But, to dare to be aware

Of mankind’s blind undoing

Will insist that we differ

In the points that we are viewing

‘Dare to be a Daniel’

My Mother said to me

Dare to be different and trust

In more than you can see

Then, if you dare to differ
Though no one will applaud
Your difference will save you if
The difference is God

© Janet Martin

If We Dare to Deny Him

PAD Challenge day 8: write a dare poem

We will never be all we were born to be

If we dare to deny the One who made us,

Don’t you see?

The voices in our head will spout cheap acronym

If we dare to deny the thread that draws us

Back to Him

Knowledge’s boast is base without belief in He

Who, somewhere in this frame of flesh placed

Immortality

…and we will never reach our full potential

If we dare to boldly deny the Giver

Of it all

Accomplishment is vain and touted Truth a fraud

If we dare to deny within its every essence

God

© Janet Martin

 Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. "But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.

 Matt.10:32-33

 
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."Ps.14:1

Dare For Today

PAD Challenge day 8: For today’s prompt, write a dare poem.

I dare you to let go,

Of what we cannot change

And hold to what we can, my dear

For life, so swift and strange

Waits for no one but hastes away

Yet, always leaves behind Today

Futile to mope and hope 

For what can never be, 

Each new Today, my dear, is rich

With opportunity

And so I dare you to let go

Of what we cannot change or know

I dare you to embrace

The moment you are in

To live-laugh-love with all your heart

What will not pass again

And in this chase twixt sky and sod

I dare you, friend, to trust in God

 Janet Martin

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

And lean not on your own understanding;

In all your ways acknowledge Him,

And He shall direct your paths. 

Prov.3:5-6

April Aria

Now frigid mantles melt in canticles of gray and gold

And eyes down-cast at times begin to lift, their longing gaze

Hungry for what we’ve come to know is veiled within her hold

Of lilac buds and lark-song, orchards frothed with blossom-haze

How poised, the brave and naked tree where breeze begins to stir

Upon the limb a diadem of hope’s most virgin green

And every field is like a child with arms flung wild, eager

For all that waits beyond the gates of winter-that-has-been

The stream gleams like a silver sash on earth’s modest, sage blouse

And countryside exhales like fellow-soldiers back from war

Her rising, falling ebb and flow of hold-let-go arouse

-es plans and dreams and readiness where soil and toil implore

The rusty, ragged overcoat of reeds will soon be shed

And gaping hills will soon be draped in capes of verdant sheath

And where the rotund ridge sports listless bristles, soon instead

Of these, pansy, daisy and dandelion bloom beneath

…the azure sweep of leisure deep where skies are warm and wide

For April is a garden ready for the dance of feet

And April is a farmer’s verve and April is a bride

And April is a pussy-willow patterned window-seat

© Janet Martin