Friday, November 9, 2018

Of Country Love and Pride



 Zoomed by this fantastic flag-display in rush-hour traffic
 in Charlottetown PEI

Country; more than mud and asphalt
Country; flesh and blood of We
Country; contingent upon the
Commonwealth of family

Country; more than demographics
Country; more than war-fought fame
Country; more than sea of faces
For each face comes with a name

And each name comes with a purpose
And each purpose comes with pride
Pride and love for life and country
Like those who loved both and died

© Janet Martin

Burn-out

PAD Challenge day 9: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Burn (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. 





The bloom of bud has fizzled
So too, the loom of leaf
The turf of earth is drizzled
With Mother Nature’s grief

The color-world of summer
Then autumn flares and fades
November’s coat is somber
In gray-bronze-umber shades

The dreamer scans new reasons
The garden-guru sleeps
The troubadour of seasons
Finds ink in fallow sweeps

The sky runs out of yellow
Before the day is night
The wind, a forlorn fellow
Preparing for a fight

How still the wooded bower
How hollow is the knell
Where the spire of flower
Has tolled its final bell


© Janet Martin


Happy-mess(Definition; the ability to find Happiness midst The Mess)


 One summer day a little girl asked me if I ever feel like the old woman who lived in a shoe. 
I laughed and told her
 'if I give you all broth without any bread and spank you all soundly and send you to bed' I might! 
I only have two today but I've learned two of certain age/personalities is enough!

It was before their naps,
  after I returned the from-scratch-veggie-soup back to the kitchen counter
 after they spit it back at me a few times 

after I picked up the pizza pieces they chucked to the floor 


...after I picked up the blocks
(because suddenly I stepped on one, once too often)
before I dropped a dish of bite-size ham pieces into the bucket of just-picked-up-blocks,
that I discovered all they really wanted for lunch 
...was the cold kidney-beans fished out of a dish of chili
and they smacked them up almost faster than I could scoop them out,
as if they were little morsels of Swiss chocolate!
Who knew?!

Sometimes we guess that happiness
Lies in some hard-fought goal
Surprised to find some find it in
The beans in a chili-bowl

Sometimes we try too hard to taste
Somebody else’s peach (THAT was at breakfast)
Bent on the Thing we think we need
But simply cannot reach

Sometimes the ‘pudding in our pot’
Might look a lot like dirt
Until we taste it then decide
To have one more for dessert

Sometimes the noisy here and now
Is heaven in a mess
Before the days when we look back
On simpler happiness

© Janet Martin



okay, now I'll try to tiptoe about the kitchen while they nap
 and try to restore some order like
putting the stove-drawer back after retrieving a car
after it rolled under the drawer
and revealed an 'oops, forgot to clean here in a while'
but then we went outside
 before the floor was dry enough to put the drawer back
and when we came in, well...lunch and all that!


Real-ity Check!


In a perfect world we would never need to remember...
But pray we never forget
for History forgotten is History repeated!

 (photos from one of the memorial parks we visited; this one at the Port of Sydney)




That was real blood and mud and tears
That stabbed their teeth and eyes
So we can kiss curls
Of very real boys and girls
And sing them sweet lullabies

That was real fear and fire that burned
At the cost of a nation’s sons
So the future could stand
With a dream in their hand
Not the dread of loaded guns

That was real love and life that lay
‘neath the splay of smoke and sky
So this plot of loam
That we call home
Could raise freedom’s banner high

That was real horror; a glimpse of hell
Where the shell of bombs still stains
The fields and streets
Where commerce competes
On the ashes of what remains

That was real Now that shaped history
And the crosses of those who gave all
Where none have the ‘right’
With Freedom’s hind-sight
To pillage Past’s scar-stricken hall

That was real cost; where the price of war
Proves freedom is never free
And each drop we sip
From its Cup that we tip
Should foster gratuity

© Janet Martin



Thursday, November 8, 2018

November Dusk Nocturne


 It's been a dark November so far...weather-wise and news-wise!
So many senseless shootings! So much Sorrow!


Sight slips from windows where early dark seeps
Through scraggly branches devoid of their tune
Earth is a stage where its celloist sleeps
Gone is the crooner of sunny high noon
Farewell feels firmer beneath the dark moon

Destiny hovers beyond the black veil
Felling the vistas we know but now guess
Hush-a-bye, clover and wild-lupine grail
Pouring impressions upon thought’s caress  
Like hills that ache in naked loneliness

Smiles can grow brittle with too little sun
Whiles can seem longer after gathered sheaf
Darling, a doggerel leaps where a gun
Severs a life from the limb like a leaf
Leaving the mean-whiles of Love rocked with grief

Sometimes seduction maneuvers the mind
Making us willing to yield to the Taunt
Better to think twice; not leap hunger-blind
Into the arms of impetuous Want
Consequence writes with a resolute font

Sight slips from windows where dusk’s early dark
Seeps through stark branches in gossamer flow
Somehow the music-man has lost his spark
Gone is the lullaby of leaf and bough
All that remains is a whisper of snow

© Janet Martin