Afterglow...

It is nothing now

Like mist

Kissed by yellow sun

It was here

Then gone

And we are nearer

to the

Hollow-eyed, gaping

Windows

Waiting for winter

After the warmer hours

Brushed flowers

And pink laughter

On the cheeks

Of days and weeks

It is nothing now

But the pallid applause

Fading in the

Afterglow

Of a summer

That was

© Janet Martin

Thoughts While Pausing To Catch My Breath...

It writes a road-map on our skin

At night we might trace it with touch

And wonder at the cool chagrin

Of time’s insistent such-and-such

While we make plans and love and war

And pine for more than what we hold

But know we cannot jar the door

That bars us from yesterday's gold

And so we go from where we were

To where we are; half-glad, half vexed

The law of clockwork does not ere

Yet tells nothing of what is next

While we, with looking back surmise

That not much stays the same for long

And so we strain with hungry eyes

Toward the dawn of a new song

Because time’s fast-forward affair

Though it never alters its pace

Since first it sipped its draught of air

Can still surprise the human race

© Janet Martin

Autumn

That careful work of bloom is rent

Time takes its toll on living things

It dulls hulled heath and pulls night’s tent

Across long, pink-glossed evenings

The aftermath that time begets

Is scarlet-amber-hunger hued

Dusk-skylines highlight silhouettes

Where laughing leaves become unglued

Into the vat of that and this

The fruit of what we had is tossed

The wine of life is what it is

A vintage pressed with moments lost

Darling, before these dwindled hours

Once we were sassy as spring’s breeze

But now we empathize with flowers

That bow beneath grief-stricken trees

We are not foot-loose dreamers now

But, perhaps here and there we gaze

With careful envy at the plow

That tilled a field of yesterdays

© Janet Martin

Time Is The Essence...

 Don't you LOVE, love, love what Time does with earth in Autumn?

Throw me a poetry-lure about Time and I'll bite every time;-))

That's the topic at Poetic Bloomings today.

Time is the essence

Of presence and air

Past swells, future lessens

A moment-ous affair

Nobody can still it

Or deter its course

Only One can will it

This breath by breath force

Ephemeral treasure

Appears, disappears

Pain, passion and pleasure

Shaping yester-years

When will it expire?

This temporal lease

Hinged to Something Higher

Someday Time will cease

…ah, then, in Time’s ending

Its crux is revealed

Death’s Awesome Awak’ning

In thin air concealed

© Janet Martin

Time is of the essence and the essence of Choice.

Who can usurp its immutable voice?

Its glance like a sparkle of sun on the sea

Temporal hinged to eternity

To Time's Boasters...

The bluff boasts of thistle-scruff, grass-stuff and wind

The Past boasts in pastures of days left behind

The day boasts of hope and possibility

Thought is the boaster of fond memory

The poet boasts nothing but gifts shaped in ink

The mother boasts mercies, the morning boasts pink

We all boast of birthdays and what life has lent

The miser boasts coffers of money not spent

The bigot boasts of anything that he can

The lad boasts of what he will be as a man

The baker boasts as he should, goodness of bread

The field boasts with harvest, the seamstress with thread

The lady boasts soft hands and fine raven locks

The farmer of land he loves, the shepherd, of flocks  

The hillside boasts picnics, the summer boasts flowers

The sky boasts in awnings of sunshine and showers

The clock boasts in tick-tock, the garden boasts plants

Yet nothing boasts anything but what God grants

© Janet Martin

 …For as I walked around and examined your objects of worship, I even found an altar with the inscription: To an unknown God. Therefore what you worship as something unknown, I now proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands. Nor is He served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.…

Acts 17:23-25