Travail of a Poem...a sonnet

 

When your hour comes there’s an ache surreal

Where thought cannot quell the urge you beseech

Grasping at whispers just beyond my reach

I close my eyes, leaning to your appeal

As unformed longing groans, moans for release

Borne on a surge of pleading mystery

Pain, pleasure and purpose blend intimately

Stoking a measure of formless increase

For your invocation of throbbing travail

Rushes in torrents through bulwarks of flesh

Testing heart-levees, boldly you enmesh

Your ethereal murmurs beneath skin’s frail veil

I tremble for, pray, who am I to spell

The poem to shape your relentless swell?

Somewhere within wanton fathoms converge

The startling summons of consonants lash

Nature of mortal and immortal clash

Yet who would rally to stifle the surge

Of word that is willing to be much more

And hope that is yearning to spill in rhyme?

I cannot argue with trifles like Time

Where oceans of unwoven lines implore

Man is not born to appease his own want

Or drift like a bateau without port or goal

Though lackadaisical havens may taunt

We are the vessels that harbor a soul

Earnestly then, we bend into the gale

Trusting the Hand on our helm to prevail

The fruit of our toil is more dear and sweet

When we have endured its labor and fear

What is life’s spoil but a day or a year?

A pulse of moments that never repeat

Humbly we bow, not because we are weak

But because in weakness Love intercedes

Succoring mortal and immortal needs

The pen would fall like a tear on the cheek

Save for the comfort that somewhere, somehow

Far down the age its extolment remains

To smile to the one who thirsts for the rains

Found in the ink-drops that earnestly flow

Shaping the whispers of comfort and Home

Wrapped in the tender-sweet arms of a poem

© Janet Martin

It's no use...one cannot fight the urge of a poem:)

Winter Thaw (an edited re-post)

No gold complexion
warms the table
Only gray
 Its modest pall

cloaks the dawn

 as wind-song

falls away

 and through staid trees
tear- melodies
splatter the face of earth  

as she swallows 

drab snow-flake seas
in her gracious mouth
Gripping winds recoil and ponder
This dashing, splashing
gray array

surging from earth's south-east corner
perplexing winter's 

Stiff foray

Janet~

Planting Miracles

Inspired by the Image Source here; Check it out to see a whole lot of Miracles!

We do not see

The breadth of its reaches

Or witness the fullness

Of immortal sod

But each deed of love

Is a seed in its garden

The bud of a miracle

Tended by God

© Janet Martin

Of Wishes...

 

I wish I could spill on paper

All those thoughts I cannot tell

In one tiny little lifetime

Full of love and longing’s swell

I wish I could gather on it

All those pieces of my heart

Shattered, scattered on lost moments

In fragmented, broken art

I wish I could find the ocean

That has claimed those quiet tears

Of love’s bittersweet emotion

Shed in secret through life’s years

I wish I could show you, darling

Love's rare intangible fray

What a little leap of lifetime

Never tells me how to say

© Janet Martin

Twilight Rhapsody

 

Beneath his moody murmur and caress

Softly she comes surrendering her lilt

Of azure glance and golden sun-flecked dress

To lie where cobalt shadow-song is spilt

All day he waited as her overture

Wove mystery to history; but now

He drapes his crushing longing over her

And smooths life’s ruthless laugh-lines from her brow

Out past the fields where tree-tops touch the sky

The vesper croons its burnished lullaby

The wheel from which her gossamer is spun

Replenishes its thread with somber hues

The filament of moments in the sun

Deepens to shrouds of midnight-tinted blues

Yet, he does not excuse his solemn trance

But softly wraps her in his muted hush

He gathers her into a gentle dance

Kissing her wantonness; horizons blush

As on the fringe of yesterday and dawn

A molten glow erupts; then it is gone

Beneath the vault where love and life unfold

She lays aside her tattered, tear-stained gown

Relinquishing her being to his hold

How tenderly he watches her lie down

The hour of her gallantries subside

Within the candor of his raw embrace

Somewhere the fringe of earth and sky collide

But darkness spills its sigh across her face

And now against his brawny chest she sleeps

He strums the air as star-song fills the deeps

© Janet Martin

Those 'What-if' Bullies

 Image Source

The solitude of quiet thought

Can be a sweet and tender bliss

Unless we stray and tread the path

Of monster-shaped, ruthless ‘what-ifs’

The what-ifs’ lunge and jeer and leer

Leaping from unexpected dips

A bully-whisper in our ear

Quenching the laughter on our lips

Oh, we do well to guard our thought

Forbidding it to wander where

These demons wait to mutilate

Our hope with visions of despair

And in thought’s quiet solitude

When what-ifs threaten their torment

How sweet to know that God is good

We walk in moments He has sent

The what-ifs that will come to be

Must first pass through His hands above

To dwell in ‘what-if’ misery

Is thus to doubt His faithful love

The solitude of quiet thought

Can be a sweet, tranquil retreat

If we surrender what is not

And place our ‘what-ifs’ at Love’s feet

© Janet Martin

 So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isa. 41:10

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you." Deut. 31:6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight. Prov. 3: 5-6

The In-betweens

Darling, when I am missing you

And there is nothing I can do

To push the minutes from the hour

Or rush the bud to spill its flow’r

Or pluck from far cloud-studded sea

The wonderment of what will be

Then darling, I embrace the sheen

Of moments in the in-between

Moments and hours disappear

How soon they shape another year

The echo of its memories

Soft ripples on thought’s phantom seas

I kiss your whisper in the air

Climbing time’s ephemeral stair

To what will be from what has been

Riveting these hours in between

And in this in between I know

That soon its transient scene, like snow

Will melt into the distant blue

So darling, when I’m missing you

I do not haste the brooding clock

Or chase life’s moments down the walk

But tenderly embrace the keen

And fleeting space of  'in between'

© Janet Martin

Mercy-flood

He reaches from His throne on high

To brush the night-time from the sky

The hand of love that never fails

Bearing the imprint of those nails

Does not ignore us in our plight

But fans the deep with Morning Light

His love beholds earth’s troubled slope

He rends the dark with Living Hope

For when we were dead in our sin

He raised us up to live with Him

Rejoice; the Son pierces the gloom

And saves us from death’s darkest doom

He lavishes on sinful men

His grace and washes sinners clean

For mortal flesh could never save

The soul from death’s eternal grave

But oh, the love His mercy gives

As man beholds the cross and lives

He reaches from His throne on high

To soothe the tear-drop in our eye

And like the sword pierced Him that day

As crimson floods washed guilt away

Now He pierces fear’s darkest night

Love bleeds across the earth in Light

© Janet Martin

Imagine if one day there was no Light, and one morning nothing to pierce the night…

Often, as the sun break through night’s dark bonds it reminds me of the Son breaking through our darkness flooding it with marvelous Light.

 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.  And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,  in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. Eph. 2:4-9