Request

Lord, help us beautify this day

Not with cold gold or molded clay

But with the things we do or say

Let’s beautify this little day

For it will never pass again

Its lilt of sun, its gilt of rain

A gifted Once; its joy or pain

Will never pass this way again

Then let us humbly do our best

Regardless of its test or quest

May we with honor earn The Rest

Of those who humbly did their best

© Janet Martin

 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. 

And what does the LORD require of you? 

To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8

The Life We Live...

The new bus-driver went z-o-o-o-o-ming by our lane this morning. Matt thought it very entertaining to watch her reversing from afar... 'please make it easy for her and run up to the next lane'! I begged, Imagine she's your mother and be nice!! 

They laughed, then did...run up to the next lane:)

It’s not the color of the sky

That makes our day; it’s not the why

Of hours rendered to our hold

Or whether we are young or old

Or where we live or what we eat

That makes our lives bitter or sweet

But this; no matter who we are

Or what we do, time tips its jar

…and thus, in the response we give

Becomes for us the life we live

© Janet Martin

Queen Ann and Kindred

Her eyes, half shut lures wanderers and poets, for they know

How soon the green of summer’s queen must don a shroud of snow

Her beckoning the reckoning where thought and hunger spar

As Duty vexes Dreamer with The Very Things That Are

The lover of Her stutters; satisfies the lack of words

With Sight and Touch; Her flower mothers broods of bloom and birds

As sky divides the night and day; poets pause, then adjust

Their points of pen accordingly because they know they must

The berried vine cleaves where the leaf of it withers and dies

And all The Things people pursue imitate its demise

Where now Her eyes half-shut suggest the imminence of sleep

Her gown scatters in tatters only Mother Earth can keep

© Janet Martin

Cotton-candy Melodies

Wind woos through wooded hues with blues and blush-jazzy appeal

It seems to play upon a sense of loneliness I feel

I’d skip the ‘I miss you’ but then, what good are memories?

Sweet, sweet the tempo of time’s cotton-candy melodies

Don’t cry for me, for we are all in this together, oh,

And everything we hold the prelude to its letting go

The once-upon-a-time of youth melts on a begging breeze

And seals sweet summer in pink cotton candy melodies

O-o-o-oh, a-a-a-a-ah, the minstrels croon and snuff high-noon with lowered dusk

And we pretend that we have grown immune to its blue-brusque

-ness that tousles our dreams and flings them far out to sea

Where they return, requiem of cotton-candy melodies

© Janet Martin

 Summer is Time's cotton-candy; a sweet momentariness

A Tangled Mess

“I’m always sentimental this time of year”, I told Matt and Victoria yesterday while we husked corn, “Because the beginning of another school year marks the official end of summer, not the date of September 23^rd indicated on the calendar”.

 Laughter tangles

With sultry breeze

As present tangles

With memories

Hint of fall tangles

Summer's tress

My full life tangles

With emptiness

Heart strings tangle

With the Intangible

Tangling with Something

Words cannot spell

Kiss tangles with tears

…yes, I confess

My life and love

Are a sweet, tangled mess

© Janet Martin