Ink Soloists

Day deepens; then it disappears

Into the thick of Eon's vest

To join the ranks of yester-years

Its maiden journey laid to rest

Sometimes the bliss of blue and gold

Rolls up the afternoon with stars

Until the only sounds it holds

Are ticking clocks, crickets and cars

The homestead wears a light or three

And is there anything more fine

Than the familiarity

Cradled within its vague outline

Night wakens words that sleep by day

And soloists of ink reply

They ravage worlds black-wrapped and gray

To hang new poems from the sky

© Janet Martin

This Granted Life...

 The tomatoes in my garden this year are smallish...

but abundant!

This granted breath we fill with death

Of winter-spring-summer and fall

Inhales, exhales, life's ether grail

Spills and refills time’s ebbing drawl

This granted Bit of grace and grit

And plea to pause its pantomime

Bids us slow-taste noon’s sun-sweet haste

And savor the flavor of time

This granted come and go, yes, no

This teasing, easing day-to-day

This fleeting hold of moment-gold

Can fold a granted life away

© Janet Martin

We are definitely savoring a gorgeous 'sun-sweet one' today!

Gracious Bestowal

The Father of compassion sees and knows

He understands man’s stuttering, poor-weak

Then in kind mercy graciously bestows

Perfection to the prayers we cannot speak

© Janet Martin

Hallelujah, He hears all those words we cannot find!

In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; 

for we do not know how to pray as we should...

Rom.8:26

Autumn's Woman...

She dies with dreams, then like a phoenix

From the ash of summer spent

She rises, soft-brushes the onyx

Arabesque of discontent

From her shoulders; now she is bolder

Older than she was before

Lessons of summer season, mold Her

Into Wisdom’s troubadour

Leaves whisper; brittle bronze-y omen

Sallies-slips-drips-swivels-swirls

To kiss the cheek of autumn’s woman

Born of summer’s yester-girl

© Janet Martin

'o-o-o-h, I love fall', sighed Victoria yesterday in a morning sharp with its suggestions,
'its comfy sweaters, jeans and tea...'
We look at each other and grin in mutual delight while Jim tries to straddle the gap twixt venus-mars

Would We Do Any Better Then?

 It's a good book, said the man next to me as if he sensed my 'should-I-take-it-or-leave-it' contemplation...

Oh, yes it was! 

This past week presented me with much waiting reading-time while waiting to pick up my daughter at basket-ball try-outs, for hubby at Dr. appointment, or while he cleaned out the trailer yesterday before we visited his mother...a good book allows these times to crawl, fly by;0)

The Tin Flute is one of those books where I could easily have highlighted pages at a time; a book that evokes in the reader a kinship with the humanness of us all...

My love, if truth were not withheld

And touch would melt this wall of skin

Exposing that want-world within

Where prayer and people-passions meld

Eye-witness with unspoken things

And all those words we cannot find

Would leave the hideout of the mind

To spell with sight its beckoning

Then tell me love, if we could trace

The hunger-pangs of heart and soul

That it seems nothing can console

And disappointed love would face

The truth, withheld in walls within

Where chasms gape between the hearts

Of very hands we hold, thought’s parts

Inept to penetrate this skin

Would we do any better then

If we could see, or would the years

Of practicing dry, silent tears

Beg for these walls of skin again?

© Janet Martin