Friday, January 15, 2016

Some Think Tis Ink Inside a Pen...



 Have you looked to see what is hiding in your pen? ;-))

Some think tis ink inside a pen
But I have seen it spill its will
In flowers while winter gales chill
The bone that holds the dreamer’s yen

Some think that black and red and blue
Are bled when pen is touched to page
But I have witnessed frost-kissed sage
And mauve-mist morn, meadows of dew

I’ve held, with nothing but a smile
The wonder of a new-born child
Or wandered moorlands, wind-swept, wild
Where only page and ink beguile

Look! there an autumn leaf drifts by
And there a butterfly, a bird
See how the transport of mere word
Can splash gold sun into gray sky
 
The heart and soul are not immune
To song or sigh or fingertips
That brush the silence as it drips
With ink-anointed winter-June

Eyes do not show all that we think
The hand that moves the pen will tell
Of worlds cupped in its citadel
…the pen holds more, my love, than ink

© Janet Martin

Outside the World is White and Gray



 It's been a week where landscape and sky are a seamless sweep of white-ish-gray...


Outside the world is white and gray
And summer seems so far away
With its bare feet and bloom-spun nook
And lilies wading in the brook

Outside the leafless world is tossed
By gales that seem surly and lost
They reel across field, wood and lake
Surreal, the silence in its wake

No fences frilled with flower-bells
Or haunt of fern or green-moss dells
Where fairies flit, no gnome or sprite
To roam this sweep of knee-deep white

Outside the world half-dark and stark
Is like a still-life work of art
No color warms this painter’s tray
Outside the world is white and gray


© Janet Martin

Thursday, January 14, 2016

To You, Dear Day


I should know you, darling
Without surprise you spill
Your faithful light of morning
Over the far blue hill

You tug from moor and meadow
Midnight’s muted manteau
You ease away the shadow
Where dusk bid us adieu

And I should fully know you
Tell me, how it can be
That after all these years, love
You still surprise me

You veil within your bearing
That which none can predict
You heed to commandeering
Of time’s law and edict

I guess I’ll never know you
By much more than your name
For no two of you, darling
Are ever quite the same

© Janet Martin

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

After A Few More Lifetimes





After a few more life-times
Perhaps then I will succeed
At turning all the pages of
Each book I want to read

After a few more life-times
The stack beside by bed
On end-tables and in my mind
Will be tagged, 'books I’ve read'

After a few more lifetimes
Maybe then I’ll beg and plead
That after living for so long
I’ve nothing left to read

But, after a few more lifetimes
I will see I read in vain
Because then I will want for time
To read favorites again

© Janet Martin

For those of us who love to read and write  the word 'bored' is not part of our vocabulary!

A Flight to the Finish-line...of Flowers



 After a few snowy, blowy days winter's late arrival seems forgotten!

Then, true to form he came, storming earth’s motley frame of trees
Infamous for his bully ways he brawled all through the night
And howled all through the morning-noon, he wrung a thousand seas
His tardiness forgotten as he swathed the world with white

No more the brooding loneliness of bronze wide-open fell
No more the moody platinum of lowered heavens weep
Now hill and rill, now nook and crook and every dip and dell
Is like a featherbed spread with pillows and throws knee-deep

To everything there is a time and season; columbine
And violet and daffodil and kindred perfumed plume
Are evermore the sweeter for their slumber where the vine
Is brittle for a little while then refurbished with bloom

So, while the wind whimpers at doors and wails at windowpanes
And Old Man Winter is a troubadour of chilling verse
Pour summer’s sought-for second cups and dream a dream of lanes
Fragrant with newborn flowers that soon springtime will disperse

© Janet Martin

Hang in there y'all...it's a fight to the finish-a flight to flowers:)
...and butterflies
...and sun-kissed sand

...and sunset beaches
...a finish-line of gold
...and blue

 ...and green