A Wantful Satisfaction

I want just enough discontentment

To keep me reaching for stars

 I want a few vegetables for soup

And to thrill when dawn spills refilled jars

I want a garden for learning

Lessons from flower and weed

I want to dare to share recklessly

When I have more than I need

I want a wish never granted

Lest I relinquish meek trust

I want to be girl-enchanted

As I splash barefoot through dust

I want to be love-smitten
By a white world pearled with rain
I want to wander its woods and hills
Again and again and again

I want slow-cooked porridge for breakfast

Vacation in a cup of tea

I want to travel the world in books

Sail on a paper-bound sea

I want to dream without borders

I want to fly without wings

I want to dance with the wind as it sweeps

Over phantom violins

I want no fear-fraught misgiving

…when death summons my final quest

I want to say life was worth living

And that I gave it my best

I want to hear heaven’s harps playing

As my bumbling footsteps fade

And then, to leave for those behind

A beautiful memory made

© Janet Martin

Slippery Stars...

The staccato tap of ice-rain since 8:00 this morning, writes sentimental songs...

Like a bow drawn, soft on heartstrings

The music of life is wrought

Pray the mist that wreaths its parting

Frames more than fanciful thought

Like a gourd out-poured in echoes

Time is an ephem’ral tryst

Farewells synchronized with hellos

Veiled in velvet amethyst

Like a mother waving, waiting

At the window as night falls

Pinning where daylight is fading

One more picture to love’s walls

Like a tempest in slow motion

Morn-noon-night drains heaven-jars

Filling the heart with an ocean

And the eye with slippery stars

© Janet Martin

Out of Reach

Sometimes we survey the skyline

Though beckoning eyes beseech

To its far-off mist-kissed mooring

It is always out of reach

Sometimes we warm to the whisper

Of a lone wind’s wand’ring whim

But for all our winsome wishing

We will never corner him

Sometimes time is quite the trickster

We can’t really see him pass

Until the face in the mirror

Startles our looking-glass

Sometimes we forget to listen

Until heart-minstrels perform

Like the rolling of an ocean

A tempestuous echo-storm

Sometimes we wait what seems like eons

As we hope and pray and plead

While the Hand that can move mountains

Fortifies faith’s mustard seed

© Janet Martin

Moment-kiss

A drip, a drop

A silver, non-stop

Soft-slipping,

Ethereal force

Deluge of

Learn-live-laugh-and-love

Ephemeral
Intercourse

Give and take

Hope, heartache

Making memories

From this;

Ebb and flow

Of hold-let-go

Intangible

Moment-kiss

© Janet Martin

Always on the Verge of Ever-cast

 I felt it as Victoria and I poured mint-lemon tea and snuggled to watch an episode of Larkrise to Candleford...

Always on the verge

Of a fresh-turned leaf

Joy is life’s sweet, lithesome splurge

And its flip-side, grief

Time has testing ways

What we thought we knew

Changes as the reach of days

Runs us through and through

Then, when we look back

After the Before

We revere the lilting laughter

Of its moments more

…where the days of life

Winnows as we gain

New appreciation for

Things words can’t explain

© Janet Martin 

 

I feel it where four goodnight hugs has dwindled to one, 

where times when we are all together are rarer now, and thus bittersweet.

I feel it as I look up to meet the gaze of a son, not quite eighteen,

As the faces of ourselves and friends begin to wear life's deeper love-lines.

I feel it in the way a morning turns into evening far too fast

and lights turn out save for the moon

as another day is Ever-cast...

 

We are enjoying some fabulous moon-rises this week!