After This

PAD Challenge day 12: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “After (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

Bit of song-dream-dance-or-sit

Bit of cheer and chatter

Bit of toil and spoil of it

Where the seasons scatter

Bit of hold before let go

Joy-begotten sorrow

Bit of learning what we know

…time’s weaning is thorough

So, pray a little prayer, please do

Life is a Grave matter

We will soon be lying too

Where the seasons scatter

Bit of bud and bloom, my love

Bit of tear and laughter

Bit of sloughing through life’s bog

Then,

The ever after

© Janet Martin

November's Night

Like ghosts of Autumns past

Mists skim skeletal trees

As darkness cloaks the common world

Of day with mysteries

November’s night is deep

A haunted corridor

Where vagabond-like vespers weep

And sweep its tuneless shore

We cannot see the stars

How black the air is laid

We feel our way like foreigners

At a strange masquerade

November’s midnight moans

It chills us with its sighs

The cat lurks like a murky, lone

Apparition with eyes

…where ghosts of autumns past

Come out to romp and play

And fill November’s night with casts

That disappear by day

© Janet Martin

Ultimate Freedom

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
 John 8:36

A Celebration of Freedom for Everyone
The Whole World Over...

…because ultimate freedom

Is not bought with a gun

But by the blood that freely flowed

From Jesus Christ, God’s Son

Pray we would wear His armour

And bear Love’s sacred sword

The Word of God, as soldier

And servant of the Lord

...because ultimate freedom

Is not bought with a gun

But by the love that came to us

In Jesus Christ, God’s Son

No barrier can bar Him

No threat or fiend control

Because ultimate freedom

Is rendered in the soul

© Janet Martin 

Because We Should Never Forget

To those who gave their all,

Or took the risk, 

To those who still do,

So we can go to work

And home

To church,

To school,

With shoes.

So we can travel 

Or marvel

As we watch the day unravel

In a garden,

On a hilltop,

Or from picnics in the park

So we can sit with kin a bit

Beneath the star-frothed dark

Or stroll through

Supermarkets

With shopping baskets

So we can cook,

Bake,

And linger

With loved ones

After dinner

Over tea and cake

So we can stop

At Hospitals,

Greenhouses,

The mechanic,

Coffee-shops,

Or grandma’s house

Without

So much

As a second thought

Thank-you

© Janet Martin

Taste-test

Ah, taste the tide that drips from high

And drink its ebbing strain

The flower of its ‘my-oh-my’

Will never bloom again

Beyond yon fence the testaments

Of summer’s tatters lie

Beneath the blue and brooding tents

Of November-hung sky

Futile to weep upon a heap

Of what will never be

While morning pours from deep to deep

An almost-memory

So taste the tide that drips from high

For soon its tilted jar

Will drain the color from the sky

And pin it with a star

© Janet Martin

Speaking of taste-test,

last night for supper I tried this new recipe 

 

Do you have cabbage from the garden that could use some using?

These cabbage rolls are a Delicious!

Talking About What We Do With What We Touch or What It Does With Us

PAD Challenge Day 10;Today is a Tuesday, which means it’s a Two-for-Tuesday prompt day.

For today’s prompt, here are your two options:

1. Write a Technology Poem.
2. Write an Anti-Technology Poem.

1.

Over-indulgence in any Thing

Results in adverse side-effects

A Thing is not good or evil, child

But becomes what we do with it

Because we are born, creatures of choice

We must learn to master our loves

And to say ‘no’ with resolute voice

Or ‘loves’ in turn will master us

…for we are all prone to some sort of temptation

Be it phones or many a sundry vice

We must learn the art of moderation

Or be prepared to pay the price

© Janet Martin

 2.

She scrolls through 

pictures,

cartoons,

vines,

ads

and misses the life

She could have had

***

 

Smart phones

have the impetus

to strip the 

smart'

right out of us

***

"Look mommy, 

look at me",

cried the wee girl

on her bike

as mommy scanned

the Thing in her hand

and clicked another

'like'

***

Technology, 

for all its worth

Ought not replace the green

of Life; 
the thing that happens

Anywhere but on a screen 

Janet~