Sonnet of Reconciliation

Where once the lusty breeze greeted the dawn
Or breathed imaginations on the dusk
Where sunset gathered shadows on the lawn
In orchards bent with fantasy and musk
Where once I lived each season’s mindless dash
Considered not the fortune of my youth
But reveled in the temporary splash
Before the quiet reckoning of truth
As all my boasts like bits of painted chaff
Rose to the starry vaults to make God laugh

Where once the thought of us stole every hour
And parting drove the heart quite nearly wild
As tight-lipped bud softly began to flower
Shedding the innocence of summer’s child
Before the slow decay of autumn’s grip
Tugged from our hand youths sweet and selfish glove
And carefree passion vanished from the lip
Replaced by kinder lines of grief and love
As calloused fingers fold in evening prayer
And humble benedictions brush the air

Janet Martin

No Quitter

‘I give up, I quit
It isn’t fair’
Yet, as those words bit the air
I knew
That it wasn’t true
And it’s not up to me
Or you
To decide
To quit trying
Because of wounded pride
Or because we’re tired
Or because it isn’t fair
And we beat the guiltless air
When everyone will have
Their own battle to fight
We’ve all been sad
And that’s all right
A war is not won
By the soldier who quits
But by he who bends
His face to the wind
Though the odds are against him
And he’s tired of it
The person who wins
Is the one who won’t quit

J~

Things...

I can rearrange my furniture
And add some fresh appeal
To corners growing stagnant,
I can walk around and steal
A vase, a book, a picture frame
And take it from the shelf
Wiggle and twist and turn them ‘round
Until I please myself

But there are things I cannot touch
Or ever re-arrange
Time does not seem to matter much
These things I cannot change
Are carefully protected
In my heart’s tender embrace
And all the changes in the world
Can’t tear them from their place


Things are but trimmings in a house
To move from room to room
But love and joy and peace, my friend
These make a house a home
My love for you brings me great joy
This great joy brings me peace
I pray that God will bless each one
Who enters here, with these

J~

After pulling my library together into one space I was left with an empty corner...
So I lugged in the book-case with all my poetry books from another room, dragged up a chair from the rec room and filled this corner...of course, in the process I created new empty spaces:))

Hind-sight

You took me where
I did not want to go
My cries filled the air
As I pleaded, ‘no’
Now, in hind-sight
I look at the end
This was the road
That led to a friend

J~

Genuine Compassion

We shake our heads and cluck our tongues
And ‘tsk-tsk’ over that and this
As ‘bad news’ makes its daily rounds
Beneath the guise of ‘no gossip’
The ‘did you hear?’ and ‘did you know’s?’
Becomes the fodder for the tongue
As fast and furious ‘bad news’ flows
And none are spared, not old nor young
But raised eye-brows and holy gasps
And verbal nuance clouds the air
As on and on the woes are passed
Of love’s misfortunes and despair
No longer private is the name
Of he who stumbled on life’s path
But in a public hall of shame
Looms penance in the gossip’s wrath
And woe to he who must endure
‘Pious compassion’ of the just
Mauling not what is good and pure
But agonies of man-kind’s lust…
…‘Let he who never yet hath sinned
Be the first to cast a stone’
Ten-thousand ‘should-haves’ cannot do
What one whispered prayer has done

Janet Martin

Morning Prayer

Open my mind, Lord
To feel every moment
Wide as an ocean
Let my visage be
Not in the seeing
But simply the knowing
That life is a footprint
In eternity


Open my eyes, Lord
And help me to feel it
A whisper of heaven
In every breath
Open my eyes, Lord
In moments reveal it
Without Your great mercy
My life would be death

Open my heart, Lord
Oh, let my vision
Not be deceived
By the world around me
Open my heart, Lord
Someday in your Kingdom
You will unveil
What these eyes cannot see

Janet Martin

October Rain Song

The dark reached long into the day
And earth could not persuade
The heavens to decline the gray
For summer’s warmer shade

The rain weeps in perpetual grief
Its tempo, high then low
Plucking the valiant autumn leaf
Into the river’s flow

The traffic hisses in the street
The wind rattles the doors
Beneath umbrellas, hurried feet
Hasten to work-place shores

The dark reached far across the hour
In desolate requiem
A dirge to every leaf and flow’r
As earth becomes a stream

Janet Martin

It was so dark at 8:00 a.m. when the kids got on the bus,
that I had to strain to see Victoria's rapidly fluttering hand
waving good-bye.

Awareness

There’s a consciousness in living
That endears life’s simple hours
And the secret of its treasure
Does not lie in mystic powers

There’s a consciousness in living
That keens both the heart and mind
To the gift within a moment
And the brevity of Time

There’s a consciousness in living
That makes sacred every breath
And enriches what we’re holding
It’s the consciousness of death

Janet Martin