Whisper a Picture...

 Above, proud auntie holding 'precious moments'

Cherish mere moments lest life disappears

Sealed in an ocean of soft-surging years

Siphon a stanza from time’s teeming laws

Salvage an anthem from Past’s gaping jaws

Precious, oh precious time’s most treasured gems

Measured in moments that become… poems

Whisper a picture in tincture of ink

Nature in limbo while poised on spring’s brink

Shimmer of mist flung o’er meadows at dawn

Grandpa’s firm handshake or wee babe’s big yawn

Flickers of shadow and light where July

Tickles the willow-wick tickling the sky

Tremor of moonlight on shimmer of sea

Murmur of midnight-rain pelting the lea

My, but a moment seems swift as a sigh

Yet, tempo of tick-tock can swallow the sky

So, borrow the Time to rhyme life’s common days

Into a token of worship and praise

Not over-looking the moment we hold

But humbly tasting its apple of gold

Cherishing moments lest life disappears

Into the current of days turned to years

© Janet Martin

After Forgiveness...

  PAD challenge day 6: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “After (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

 

After the bold, bare facts of love have etched their indelible knell

Like landmarks on a glove that pulses with worlds too complex to spell

After the cold, hard truth smacks us in faces once brave with fool’s scorn

After the heart has weathered being stretched, crushed, broken, hunger-torn

We learn to live, to love and give instead of scheming how to get

The aftertaste of wonder lingers; hope soft-mingled with regret

After we reach much higher than the ways that naked eye can see

After Forgiveness, God’s grace hones from bones of pride, humility

© Janet Martin

After All

PAD Challenge day 6: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “After (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. 

 

Sometimes I laugh, because after many interruptions the poem that began 

veers off course as I've forgotten where I was going with it.

so I try to gather the fray into some semblance of sense...

Sometimes 'somedays' that never will be

Must fill a line in poetry...

God, help the 'somedays' that remain

Never be a gift, granted in vain 

Sometimes it's good to count the things we did do, 

 ...not just the things we were going to and didn't!

After the days that turn to years

Where dusk by dusk, time disappears

To softly seal surrendered strains

In common cloth of what remains

Where Intention renews its vows

Of ‘Someday soon’, but then the Nows

Somehow prevail to strew the air

With shock-waves of moments there were

...to fill our stare with meek surprise

As we begin to realize

The deftness of dawn’s pirouette

Soon etched in onyx silhouette

…of moments met and tended to

Where words like 'yet still beg and woo

While weight of whispers chisels scars

Into the walls that cup dream-stars

And after our swarthy vow

To trick the touch of Time somehow

We learn, while growing old and small

We can’t out-fox time after all

...but make the most of moments lent
That soon play host to moments spent
And days that deftly drain a year 
 With nothing but the Now and Here

© Janet Martin

After-path

PAD Challenge day 6: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “After (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. 

We, armed with tools of mortal trade

Stand on a footing that was laid

By people who pass through Time’s hall

Like mighty waves that rise and fall

Always followed by those behind

…thus, wise the one who keeps in mind

The successor to morrow’s world

And mentors well the boy and girl

Waiting to fill the shoes of we

Who will have passed to history

Save for the footing that we laid

For future-students of Time’s trade

Who, new to olden aftermath

Curb stars through which to carve a path

Where still unchanged through centuries

A child is trained by what it sees

© Janet Martin

A verse that is never out-dated!

 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Prov.22:6

 

Precious, Precious Heart-stealer

PAD Challenge day 5: For today’s prompt, write a 'stolen' poem.

Well, for this prompt Gramma didn't need to think twice!
She's a heart-stealer for sure.

From our first precious peek

at chubby-cheeks

button nose

they steal our hearts

to the tips of our toes

…where nothing in the world

no matter

what we lack

makes us wish that we

could have our hearts back

© Janet Martin

Michelangelo

PAD Challenge day 4: For today’s prompt, pick a painter,
make him or her the title of your poem,
 and then, write your poem.

Image source of Sistine Chapel; Wikipedia

 

because only this

leaves us full-awed

the sacred tryst

twixt man and God

...and only this
since time began
Bridges the rift
Twixt God and man

...and only this
fuels the fire
that puts God's kiss
on man's desire

Self for self
Or man for man
Can never inspire
What God can

Janet Martin