Saturday, January 2, 2016

The Truth About Truth...






Mostly truth does not need flaunting
Like a trophy on a shelf
With a showcase for its vaunting
Because truth speaks for itself

Mostly truth does not need shouting
Or a trumpet to be heard
For in spite of mouthy touting
Truth speaks loud without a word

© Janet Martin


Already...to the second day of 2016...





Already the date that cut the cord
To 2016, at midnight’s gong
Has joined those ranks ‘of former things’
And sealed its signature in song

Already the steady wedding of hours
Has claimed to Bygone’s misted courts
The grinning firstborn of New Year
That midnight both births and aborts

Already we sense the changeless change
Time exhales in spite of intent
To rearrange our habits, oh,
Already the day is sorrow-rent

…and bent with human-nature’s ways
Already we sense a falling apart
That would prevail, save for God’s grace
To wounds bleeding deep in the heart

© Janet Martin

Isa. 42:8-9
 "I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images. "Behold, the former things have come to pass, 
Now I declare new things;...

Laughing With the Laughing Morning




Day Two of 2016

Morning slides down heaven’s banister
Laughs like a carefree boy
Shakes a pillow until the sky
Is filled with feathered joy

It is winter in the country
Its sweeping solitude
Is blanketed in folds of white
Delight, earth’s-song subdued

…save for the sigh in the pine tree
Save for the lone wind’s cry
Save for the far-off murmur of
Time trickling from the sky

Something tickles yonder tresses
New day wiggles its toes
Never cold to the caresses
That tick and tock bestows

Morning slides down heaven’s banister
Lands in a laughing heap
At the feet of us kicking back the cloth
Of fluffy folds of sleep

© Janet Martin

Friday, January 1, 2016

Oh, What A Life





Discovery makes new the ancient; what a life is time
Like a moss-covered milestone on which eager children climb
Clueless at how far hours reach; or what its gate unbars
We, fresh-faced foreigners, stumble-tumble toward the stars
And earn the song that yester’s young-at-heart learned through Time’s strife
Singing like they, the blue and gray of oh, oh, what a life

The take-and-make of moments is a sacred bread to break
Its crumbs of living scatter pink across dusk’s fired lake
Rhapsody and soliloquy, ballad, sonnet and prose
Unfolds in new-old poetry like fathoms of a rose
And because we are learning often we forget to look
Until its petals are pressed between pages in Past's book

Time’s tapestry of touch and taste haste’s blue through us; the grass
Once green is brown and brittle where the little hours pass
Like shadows first before us then behind us; solitude
Is often-times the playground for life’s teeming echo-brood
...where we, tongue-tired beam and dream dreams, rosy-cheeked and rife
Still singing on time’s way its melody; oh, what a life

The eyes of true love, darling, never utter condemnation
But buoy our want and will toward time’s obligation
And we would all be crying without cause for joy, but oh
Oh, what a life; the knife that wields in winds that brutal blow
Melts in the hand of Time’s forgiveness; winter turns to spring
Oh, what a life; oh, what a song Time's children learn to sing

© Janet Martin