Rail-way Back-track

Once, long before the thought of counting years

crossed my mind

I walked here, counting railway ties

soaked in sweat, tar-drenched sunbeams

And dreams,

blue eyes scanning the line where skies

and the impossible met

in passions unrealized.

I didn’t know the meaning of regret

Yet.

The sumac still burns red in the purple autumn dusk

Supple breeze teases the stalwart cattail.

Choke cherry and mountain ash flaunt fruits of tempting betrayal

and in the stillness I can almost feel the thrilling and ominous

humming of steel on steel, sparks grazing the earth below

in a blazing shower of golden snow. Little girl,

tuck that hand-stitched quilt beneath your chin. Don’t cry.

The train is not really lonely at night

as it hurries by, with its long and plaintive cry.

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.

Progress has taken it all away.

No longer feasible, is what they say,

tearing away labor, sweat and tears of the past

with labor, sweat and tears of the present.

Eyes look to the future,

and where once I counted railway ties to the sky,

now corn-fields sigh and twilight gleams upon the echo

of a young girl's dreams. Mother, tuck that hand-stitched quilt

beneath your chin. Don’t cry. Little girls still dream out to the big sky.

Janet~

An attempt at free-verse, hidden rhyme, sort of…

I have not done very much traveling in my life...yet:)

...so my initial reaction, when I saw this prompt was 'not for me', but the more I thought about it the more I realized how often a smell, a sound, a season, triggers a memory, a re-visit to those places near and dear to the heart. Last week on one of the poetry sites the prompt was 'trains'. I would have loved to try it, but could not remember where I saw the prompt. I loved watching the train pass through the back of our property.I loved its long approach on a quiet winter night, the anticipation, a thrilling rush of fear and excitement at the first distant moan, oh, so very faint, then increasing, increasing to a thundering rush of steel and whistle and bells, reaching a crescendo,then fading, fading, fading....until all was silence once more, still gives me goose-bumps. I think this is why I thought of the railway track today...

http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/52255/railway_track_in_matheran.jpg

This photo is not the actual track but I thought it portrayed perfectly my memory...the picture is found at above link.

Object of my Desire

I hear you moaning upon the dark limb

Your troubadour passion is passive and dim

Once I, delighted in your boldest vaunt

Eagerly longed for your audacious taunt

But your flagrant charm is vanishing thus

And I cannot claim one moment of us

You sprawled before me with flirtatious eye

Sure-footed, willing and ready was I

Laughing, we threw caution into the night

Imbibed with sweet nectar of summer delight

I knew you would leave; I hoped you would stay

Why do I grieve as you’re slipping away?

This morning your teardrop caressed my cheek

No words were exchanged; there is naught to speak

For Time is unable to restore to me

One moment of us or what used to be

My heart has no seasons; what can I do?

I’ve run out of reasons to stop loving you

I study the object of my desire

Is it you that I love, or simply your fire?

Is it your parting or Time that I grieve?

If you stayed too long would I ask you to leave?

I reach out to touch you; but all I can hear

Is Time’s adulate ticking as you disappear

J~

Paradox

We spend trillions

Deploying aircraft,

armies and artillery

Into a country

Goal-blast city to rubble heap

Death is an unfortunate

Cost of doing business

We look to the sky

Begging, weeping, asking why

God would allow earth-quakes,

Fires, hurricanes, floods

And all manner of devastation

As the death toll rises

And we deploy mercy missions

Janet Martin

inspired by a line in -Thoughts from the Woods by Robert F. Harrington

Beauty is Happiness

http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/2011/09/midnight-snack-004.html

Today I do not ask for the world

With a wishlist of selfish demands

I desire only life’s bare necessities

Your eyes, your lips, your hands

Life has many a beauty to boast

Some of them glorious and grand

But I’ve found nothing that moves me more

Than your eyes, your lips and your hands

A scalpel and blade, a suture, a tuck

Are not tools of beauty, my friend

If you seek it there then I wish you good luck

On a quest that will never end

Beauty is born of selfless love

It cannot be bought on demand

I’ve been beautiful beneath the touch

Of your eyes, your lips and your hands

Janet Martin

I realize as I penned the words ‘selfless love’

That is an oxymoron…

If it is directed to satisfy one’s selfishness it is not love:

On a Silent Dance-floor

The moon has climbed her lofty trail
above the timberline
It drapes its silver-tinted veil
across the darkened pine

The midnight wraps its sullen fist
around the hour of mirth
which slumbers now beneath the mist
Enshrouding climes of earth

The wind composes melodies
Soft, slow and sorrowful
Its lyric rouses memories
That time cannot annul

The river slides out to the skies
Its sultriness is gone
I wrap my arms around your sighs
I will not dance alone

Janet Martin

Barriers

There is a box
or is it a wall?
It has no locks
No form at all

We share things
a touch, a glance
sometimes we laugh
sometimes we dance

Behind our eyes
the truth implores
A vault of cries
without doors

There is a box
Or is it a lair
That guards those things
We never share?

J~.

You are not a Tree

Trees

shed their leaves

in tears of burnished amber- rust.

Summer is done.

Autumn grieves

then it fades

into the purple twilight dust.

You

are not a season

Or a tree, nor am I.

Thought cannot be taught

to drift

without reason

like a leaf beneath the sky

You

it seems,

are enmeshed in the fabric of my skin.

In my dreams

and thought you reside,

I breathe out

I breathe in

You

do not evaporate

as I exhale, slow and low

I will never

Need to wonder

Where you are

Or where you go

Someday

perhaps I’ll find

a surgeon skilled with the art

of severing you

from me

like a limb from a tree,

…without removing my heart

J~

Scattered Leaves?

…and there they lie beneath the tree

Parched echoes of what used to be

Sonnets of laughter and regret

Bleeding from summer’s silhouette

And life’s fair hour in the sun

Before minuscule dreams are done

As we reach for life’s deeper Truth

Unacknowledged in our youth

But now we see mortality

Like a small leaf upon a tree

Where soon its passion decks the sod

Like crumbled thrones of lesser gods

That cannot succor our great need

With filthy lucre of our greed

For all the greatness man achieves

Is nothing more than withered leaves

If we should fail to recognize

The Power cradling sea and skies

What is a man but shards of dust?

Driven by our foolish lust

Where nothing on this temporal earth

Holds credence of eternal worth

But we are loved and owned by He

Who forms each leaf upon the tree

And in each man a living soul

That nature’s law does not control

For then we would be nothing more

Than scattered leaves upon earth’s shore

Janet Martin